


glamorous calves and a little melodrama

by pepperfield



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon, Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Amnesia, Family, Ficlet Collection, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, M/M, POV Second Person, Secret Identity, Vigilantism
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2017-03-23
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:15:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 33,133
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2252082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pepperfield/pseuds/pepperfield
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A collection of short, fluffy (mostly) Tuckington AUs, which are all a bit silly. Feel free to request a setting/plot and I'll see what nonsense I can churn out!</p><p>i. In which Chorus is a summer camp, and the civil war is a capture the flag game gone slightly awry.<br/>ii. It's Tucker's birthday, and he deserves breakfast in bed.<br/>iii. Wash isn't great at Seven Minutes in Heaven.<br/>iv. Wash leaves the laundromat with more than he bargained for.<br/>v. Kidnappings! Vigilantes! Unrequited love! Intrepid reporter Tucker has got a lot on his plate.<br/>vi. Wash gets amnesia, and stuff goes about as well as one might expect.<br/>vii. Caboose brings a new friend home. Tucker is less than pleased.</p><p>Note: the original 2nd chapter (boarding school AU) has been deleted, sorry!</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. it's the flag, man, you know

**Author's Note:**

> me circa 2008: haha, I kind of want to ship Wash and Tucker, but it'll never make any sense, oh well
> 
> me in 2014: MY TIME HAS COME
> 
>  
> 
> Seriously though, everyone else already wrote all the good rvb fic, so I'm here to deliver the dumb AUs nobody asked for!!

Cunningham doesn't make it.

Rogers doesn't make it either, but the memory of Cunningham stays with Tucker longer, because he'd been right there when Locus made his move. Five feet away, weapon at the ready, and he still couldn't do anything besides watch, helpless, as Locus took the kid out.

It was Tucker's fault they were that far into enemy territory in the first place.

Which means it's also pretty much his fault that Cunningham, the little punk, is now sitting on the stairs of the Fed cabin, enjoying a slice of one of Locus' stolen watermelons and laughing it up with his former enemies.

"This is ridiculous," Grif snaps, throwing his binoculars down at Simmons, who barely manages to avoid getting knocked in the head. "We're busting our asses over here trying to steal a flag in a game _we don't even care about_ , and the second they're out, the little bastards turn traitor for what, some fucking fruit?"

"I mean...you'd do the same thing in a heartbeat," Simmons says, scooting up the hill to crouch down next to Caboose, who's busy making flower crowns for their "lieutenants."

"You're right, I so fucking would, so remind me again why I haven't yet?" Grif turns to glare at Tucker, who shrugs irritably back.

"Look, dude, I know this sucks, but Kimball said that Locus promised to let the guys go if the Republic won. So all we gotta do is help these kids, and we're set." Tucker snags the binoculars back from Simmons, and directs his gaze toward the cave where the upper campers liked to hang around at night during their free time, especially those who were rumored to be "seeking alone time together," so to say. That was where Locus had gotten the drop on Wash. It was also where Tucker and Wash...well, he doesn't have time to think about that right now, so he shakes his head to dispel the thought from his mind, and turns to look at the enemy's flag instead, waving proudly from the mess hall. It's not even that guarded, and yet, it continues to elude their grasp.

"No, I get that part, you moron, what I'm asking is, if Sarge and Donut and the others can't even escape from a bunch of twelve year olds, why do we need them anyway?"

Simmons, face patchily sunburned from weeks of improperly applied sunscreen (Grif's fault, someway, somehow), pipes up, "Day trip, remember? Carolina and Church said if they caught us fucking around when they came back, we'd be left behind. Again. For the third week in a row. I'm pretty sure letting half our cabin get abducted by preteens counts as fucking around."

With a labored sigh, Grif sinks his face into the dirt. "Right. Day trip. Restaurants. Supermarkets. Cheetos. Twinkies. Coke. _Fries. Hamb-_ " Simmons has to reach over Caboose's broad back to smack Grif silent.

Caboose finally looks up from his project when he registers his favorite word. "Church? Church is coming back?" His face lights up like it's fireworks night, and Tucker is so not looking forward to having to deal with this summer's Blue Team goodbye. Leaving Church is literally Caboose's least favorite part of the whole year, and it's going to be magnified by a thousand this time around.

"Yeah, buddy, but he's going to be really pissed if we don't rescue our dumbass friends, so go grab the kids for some more training, okay?" With a cry of excitement, Caboose is off, careening back down the hill into the middle of the obstacle course going on below. 

After Caboose leaves, Simmons turns to Tucker, hesitating as he chooses his words carefully. "Tucker, we all want to get the others back, but uh, honestly, our kids kind of suck? And I mean, we've missed day trips before; it's not that big a deal, right?"

"Bacooooon," Grif wails.

"Shut up, Grif. It just seems like you're getting really caught up in this, so..." He trails off, and Tucker nods, trying to fill the awkward gap without explaining just exactly _why_ he cares so much.

"No, you're right. We fuck up all the time, it's not a big deal. I just figure, y'know, if we're roped into helping anyway, might as well get something out of it? Anyway, I'm gonna go help Caboose make water balloons. I'll see you guys tonight at the meeting," he babbles out, before retreating. Simmons waves him off, still looking a little concerned, but Tucker really does not want to continue that conversation right now. Or ever.

\--

So, the thing is, it's their last year at Blood Gulch. It's almost unbelievable that their ten plus years of tomfoolery - as Sarge would put it - is about to come to an end. Tucker's been trying to distract himself from thinking about it; he's not sentimental, okay, he's not going to fucking cry or some shit, no matter how "emotionally fulfilling" Doc claims it'll be. But he's been stuck with this band of idiots for over half his life, and it doesn't seem right without ending their final summer with one last stupid hurrah. Something to remember these guys by when he's sitting through orientation meetings and boring first day of class introductions.

...maybe he's a little sentimental.

But the other thing, the slightly-more-major-than-he's-making-it-out-to-be thing that Tucker's been avoiding, is The Wash Problem. Not that Wash is a problem. No, it's not an issue at all that Tucker can't stop thinking about soft blond hair and that wry, crinkling smile, and warm calloused fingers that curl perfectly around Tucker's shoulder. Whatever, it's fine, Tucker has all this shit on lockdown, it's seriously not ruining his life or anything.

Except for that little slip up yesterday. But he's not going to think about that. Because it's not a problem. It's more of a thing. The Wash Thing. Yeah, that seems appropriately noncommittal yet threatening. Good.

\--

"I mean, sure you _could_ go through with this plan, just like you _could_ stick your dick in the campfire, but wouldn't, _because it's fucking stupid_." Felix punctuates his statement with a vigorous hand chop at the bonfire where Kimball's making s'mores for her New Republic campers. 

"Felix! Language!" she shouts, brandishing a burnt marshmallow in their direction. It flies off her branch and lands in Caboose's hair. Grif plucks in neatly out and pops it in his mouth before Tucker can tell him Caboose hasn't showered since Tuesday. 

"Sure, boss," Felix responds, but  his eyes are still fixated on Tucker and the others. "I'm not kidding. If you just rush them without thinking it through first, someone is gonna get shot in the eye with a water gun. You really want that on your shoulders? Poor Palomo with head trauma because Locus lobbed a balloon too hard?"

Tucker shrugs. "Palomo would probably deserve it, honestly."

"Fine, Jensen then. Look at that pathetic little face. It's on you if she ends up breaking her braces on something." Simmons looks alarmed at that, so Tucker gives in.

"Okay, fine, we won't crash the Fed base until the kids learn to throw. And run without wanting to puke."

Felix nods, a little smugly, and claps Tucker on the arm, before sauntering over to join Kimball by the fire.

Across the field, the Fed campfire burns bright, illuminating their flag whenever the flames lick up too high. 

\--

Yeah, so Tucker totally lied about the whole waiting thing.

It wasn't hard to convince the others to come with him, sneaking out of their cabin at five am, cloaked in the pale fog misting through the camp. Felix is a douche, but he had a good point about the kids getting hurt, so off they go, alone. Just like old times.

At the end of neutral territory, they break off into pairs, Simmons and Grif sticking to the treeline, while Tucker and Caboose high tail it to the jutting rocks close to the crafts cabin. In the mist, it's hard to make out their surroundings, so when a Fed camper seemingly materializes in front of Caboose while he's shuffling forward, he can't help the startled yelp that escapes. Unfortunately, this serves to alert the other Fed kids lurking around the base, and before Tucker can stop to wonder just why so many people are awake already, there are water balloons flying through the air from every direction. Grabbing Caboose by the arm, he leads them up and over the first rock, ignoring Grif's shriek resounding from the trees. Simmons can deal with it. Or maybe not, since several seconds second Tucker hears the unmistakable sound of Simmons cursing up a storm.

The two of them scamper past a couple of kids, one of which Caboose actually manages to shoot with his gun, before sliding into the underbrush besides the crafts cabin. Through the leaves, Tucker can spy the flag, being guarded by a shaky looking kid. It's less than forty yards away, and part of him wants to break away and just go for it, but in the back of his mind are two troubling questions. One, how did the enemy know they'd be attacking? And two, just where the hell is Locus?

"Tucker," Caboose hisses urgently at his side, "Look! It's Admiral Butter Crust's back door!"

" _What?_ " Tucker starts to splutter out before he notices where Caboose is pointing. And indeed, the crafts cabin's side door has been left ajar. He knows from being roped into Donut's macrame lessons that the door on the other end opens out right next to the mess hall. At this point, it's probably the best route they have. "Good work, dude! Okay, on three, we'll go for it. One..." and he peeks out to make sure the coast is clear, "...two..."

Caboose takes off.

"I said on three, for fuck's sake!" Tucker screeches, chasing after him. He's halfway to the building when Caboose reaches the door and yanks it open. But instead of heading inside, Caboose freezes. He looks back at Tucker, who stops short when he registers the darkening stain of moisture spreading through his shirt. In the doorway stands Locus.

There's no time to strategize anymore. Tucker scrambles away desperately, opting to run around the cabin instead, but he doesn't even make it ten feet before almost colliding head on with the guy who comes strolling around the corner. It's only shock that prevents him from decking the dude in the face when he sees who it is.

"What the _fuck_ , Felix?!"

"Why, good morning to you too, Tucker! What brings you around these parts so early in the morning?" Felix's smirks are deeply telling about his character. His expression right now reads something like: "Yes, I impress even myself with how cunning I am." And, luckily for Tucker, it also seems to be saying: "Please stand still so I can expound at length about how I tricked you," so he spins on his heel and backtracks toward the rocks before Felix can catch him. His plan, if it can even be called that, is to reroute for a frontal attack and power his way through the masses of Fed kids, because at least he can stand a chance against them. Felix shouts something as Tucker retreats, but he can't hear it over the sound of his own strained breathing. 

As he reaches the top of the rock at a dead run (in retrospect, a terrible idea), someone hoists themselves up from the other side, right into his path. Instinctively, he draws away, but the surface of the rock is damp from the mist, and his left leg slips out from under him, sending him right into approaching enemy. 

Except it's not actually an enemy. Brown eyes meet gray ones for a split second, just long enough for the surprise to set in, then Tucker is tumbling down, and taking Wash along for the ride. Their landing is rough; Tucker's arm is crushed under Wash's torso on impact, and his left ankle twisted at a painful angle, while Wash gets all the air squashed out of him, along with a nasty gash on his palm. With his remaining energy, Tucker rolls off his friend, which sends a spark of agony through his arm.

Panting heavily, Wash looks over at Tucker and starts moving his mouth like he wants to say something, but keeps pausing every few seconds to look more and more mystified. Eventually he settles on shaking his head and reaching over jerkily to pat Tucker on the stomach. Pat, pat, pat. Tucker assumes it means "good job," but Wash is pretty weird, so who even knows. Maybe it means "thanks for not breaking my neck."

Above, the sun peeks out from the dissipating fog, and illuminates Felix, staring down at them from the top of the rock. "Shit, you guys really do suck," he shouts, gesturing for someone behind him to come over. Wash removes his hand to flip Felix the bird, then lets it flop back onto Tucker. As the sounds of Doc Grey gleefully scolding campers and Kimball's uncharacteristic rage fill the field, a strange shiver runs along Tucker's spine, and suddenly he's laughing so hard it jostles his arm, bringing tears to his eyes. Wash punches him half-heartedly in the kidney, but he's smiling too, in that crooked way of his that leaves a dimple on one cheek and scrunches up the freckles by his eyes. Tucker wonders if it's okay to be so happy.

\--

His shoulder hurts like hell, but it's losing out to the embarrassment settling heavy in his gut. Lavernius Tucker does not embarrass easily, but right now he'd rather be trying to intervene in a Carolina fistfight than have the talk he knows is impending. Things are only made better (worse?) by the fact that Wash makes a sadly hilarious face when Doctor Grey cleans up the cut on his hand.

Once Doc Grey bustles out of the room with a happy hum, promising to return after she fetches some ice, Wash coughs, breaking the silence. "You know, you're heavier than I thought you'd be, considering."

"Stop calling me short, you dick," Tucker shoots back automatically. "No, wait a sec, stop calling me fat! Asshole."

Wash's face twitches in that way it does when he's pretending he's not amused, before his default Serious Dude who Does Serious Things expression returns. "You're okay though, right? How's the arm?" He reaches over with his bandaged hand but Tucker flinches away without thinking and Wash withdraws, looking somewhat hurt. Dammit. That wasn't what he wanted. With a sigh, he decides. He's gotta settle this someday; might as well make it today.

Hopping off his chair, Tucker drags it over to Wash's other side, as the other boy watches him, bemused. Once they've effectively swapped positions, Tucker sits back down and links their uninjured hands together without looking Wash in the eye.

"Oh." Wash looks down at their joined hands and gives a gentle squeeze; Tucker swears his pulse triples in speed afterwards. "You could have just told me to switch seats with you," Wash says, a hint of laughter in his voice.

"Shut up and stop ruining it."

They sit quietly for a beat or two, each second marked by a wave of heat in Tucker's palm.

"Hey," Wash begins, tightening his hold on Tucker, "this means something, right? It's not just- back in the cave, when you said-"

"I meant it," Tucker interrupts, before Wash can embarrass both of them by saying it out loud. "All of it. This?" he says, waving their hands together, "This is what I was talking about, when, uh. You know." Now his heart has hit warp speed.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah." Tucker feels restless, like there's a fire lit under his skin, but Wash prevents him from escaping by getting up and standing so that they're face to face. His eyes are terribly bright and Tucker's breath hitches in his throat.

"I was going to say it back. Before Locus happened. Before you launched a rescue mission to save me from some sugar-high kids- which, thanks by the way, despite how vastly unsuccessful it was. I mean it, too. You're the only-"

"Hey, assholes, what did I say about fucking around," Church bellows, slamming the door open with a grin, which morphs into shock and finally reaches the logical conclusion of resigned exasperation. "...not exactly the kind of fucking around I was referring to, but the point still stands, I guess. No sex in your bunks. Or outside."

"Jesus Christ, knock first!" Wash yells back. Church shrugs, and throws his hands in the air, backing out of the doorway, revealing the rest of their cabin peering in curiously. Someone wolf-whistles. Wash collapses into Tucker, utterly defeated.

"Alright, boys, let's give them a moment," Carolina says from somewhere down the hall. "You can harass them later, after I've whooped your asses for monumentally screwing up a children's game." There's some grumbling, but the other guys file away dutifully, albeit with a good amount of leering as they pass. Church, in a rare showing of courtesy, closes the door when he leaves.

Tucker really wants to hear the end of that sentence, but he's not one to complain about a pliant Wash in his arms. There's always time for talking later, when they're all confined to cleaning the camp while everyone else gets to go out.

"Hey."

"Hmmm?" It comes out sounding like a purr. Wash is apparently just a large, human-shaped cat.

"Church never said we couldn't have sex in the health room."

The swat he receives on the head is so worth the look on Wash's face.

 


	2. always eat breakfast

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick little domestic modern!AU where everything is rainbows and nobody gets stabbed, ever.

It takes a few tries for Tucker to open his eyes; he blinks at the ceiling, drab white and cobwebbed in the corners, before turning to the empty side of the bed. It's cool to the touch, the sheets rearranged as best as is possible while he's still occupying the other half - the pillow, however, is still caught between his thighs, from when he took it captive in his sleep. On the space where the pillow used to be is a card of blue construction paper, folded neatly. Tucker rubs the sand from his eyes before plucking it up. A crudely drawn picture of a cake crowded with candles adorns the cover and on the inside is written, in a firm but uneven hand, "HAPY BIRTDAY DAD!!!! LOVE JUNOIR AND WOSH". The rest of the card is dotted with smiley faces of different colors, some without noses and some with oddly toothy grins. The desire to laminate and frame the thing surges up in him and he laughs into his blanket. When did they become so domestic?  
  
The sound of shattering ceramic and Wash's swearing cut short startles Tucker enough to get him to sit up. Releasing Wash's flattened pillow, he slips out of bed, pulling on the first clean t-shirt he finds in their drawers, and ambles into the bathroom. In the time it takes for him to pee and brush his teeth Junior screams once, Wash manages two full uncensored curses, and something wet sounds like it hits the floor. Since it's his birthday, he takes his time putting on sweatpants and tying up his hair, leaving them to bungle for a few more minutes.  
  
When he leaves the bedroom, he's expecting some measure of mess in the kitchen, but maybe just like a smashed egg and one broken plate at most. Wrong. It's a fucking war zone.  
  
The floor is coated in flour and puddles of buttermilk and OJ, and the walls aren't faring much better. A plastic bowl of lumpy batter sits on a stool by the sink, and two squished bananas and an avocado lie sadly on a plate: a smoothie never meant to be. Hidden behind one upturned table is Junior, his face splattered with pancake batter and an arsenal of half a dozen eggs at his disposal. Wash is crouched by the sink with a lump of what looks like half-baked cake in his hands. As Tucker enters, he and Wash realize in the same moment the decision he's going to make, and he barely slides behind Junior's table before Wash launches the cake ball at his chest. It explodes against the fridge, moist bits flying in the air.  
  
"Nice jump. Looks like doing squats paid off, didn't it?" Wash calls from somewhere near the cabinets.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I'll show you how much they paid off later, as a consolation prize for when you lose this fight," Tucker shouts back. He catches Junior in a hug, and tries a futile attempt at wiping the batter from his son's face, but it's too sticky. Junior beams at him and mouths "happy birthday", first in Sangheili, then in English. "Thanks, little dude. Gimme an egg and let's teach Wash a lesson." Taking a quick look around the table, Tucker sees Wash digging cake out of the pan and crafting several projectiles. With a few whispered instructions to Junior, Tucker sets their plan in action on the count of three.  
  
Leaping back over the table with a cry, he tosses an egg at Wash's feet, missing of course, since civilian life really hasn't dulled his husband's reflexes that much. Ducking low, he avoids the cake lobbed at him, and sends another two eggs out, forcing Wash to do a defensive roll to the side. Right up against the stool. Wash notices his error a split second too late, and Junior upends the bowl of batter onto his head.   
  
Some is deflected by his arms, but enough winds up on Wash's face that he's swiping batter from his mouth as he gives in. "Okay, I surrender. Waving the white flag. You win."  
  
After a victory lap around the kitchen with Junior, Tucker leaves the remaining eggs on the counter, and unrolls a handful of paper towels to scrub away at the mess covering the rest of his family. It's not very successful. "This is hopeless. What did you guys put in this shit? Is it supposed to be edible?"  
  
"The instructions on the box were missing so Junior made up his own measurements. I didn't want to stifle his creative development," Wash responds, letting Tucker gingerly clean around his eyes. He points at a plate covered by a towel; Tucker removes the cloth to find a few gummy black disks lying beneath.  
  
"Are you actively trying to murder me?" he asks, handing a pancake to his son. Junior grips the pancake tight and begins to stretch it into an oblong shape. It doesn't break. "Did you just invent fake rubber?"  
  
"Happy birthday?" Wash tries, with a helpless look. Even covered in goop he's terribly endearing, with that baffled "how did this go so wrong" expression, so Tucker kisses him on the only clean spot on his face, and tosses all the other pancakes in the trash, atop the shards of glass.  
  
"I forgive you for being a human disaster. I know it's not your fault," he says magnanimously. "Now let's go order some real food."  
  
While Wash and Junior scrounge around in the living room for takeout menus, Tucker returns to the foot of the bed and takes his card. With a paper towel, he scrapes the cake from the fridge and affixes his card to the door with a magnet, right in the center. Happy birthday indeed.


	3. what if this isn't heaven

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is 0% making out and 100% teen drama. I'm so sorry.

  
When North pulls the door open, South shoves him out of the way, swiping at her mouth with the back of her hand and thundering back to her spot next to Church, who keeps telegraphing agitated looks at her and the door. Tex exits impassively, her poker face perfectly arranged, but Wash can see the slight difference in lipstick color at the corner of her mouth. Hidden behind Maine's large frame, he's able to sneak a glance at South without attracting her ire, and even with most of her face hidden behind her knees he can spot the remains of her blush coloring her cheekbones. Huh. Wash elbows Maine surreptitiously and tries to gesture at South with only his eyebrows, but Maine gives him a flat look and rolls his eyes. Should've figured; Maine's the least gossipy of Wash's friends.

"Okay, time for the next round," York announces, waving the empty bottle with a flourish. The group had unanimously elected him the master of ceremonies after he'd gone three times in a row, with the last culminating in Kaikaina's bra disappearing and Grif trying to suplex York into the couch. Some people were just born naturally (un)lucky. "Remember, if you want to sit out or join in, now's the time! Spinning in 5, 4, 3..."

Wash has no intention of joining in, not after last time when he'd spent the whole seven minutes listening to Wyoming's knock knock jokes. But as York reaches the end of his countdown, Connie's icy fingertips slip under his shirt and stick him sharply in the sides, causing him to jolt forward, right into the circle. Dammit, he knew he should've stayed in the kitchen to help Sarge fix up the snacks. Wash attempts to scooch back to his spot, but somehow Caboose has materialized between Maine and Connie in those two seconds, so he's trapped in place as the bottle slows. It gently passes Carolina to point right at the edge of Wash's knee, and he curses Connie's name to high heaven. York tugs him up to his feet and leads him over to wait by the closet door as the others cheer.

With hands stuffed in his hoodie pockets and bangs falling into his face, Wash isn't quite projecting the kind of easy confidence or liquid bravado one ought to have in this scenario. He's certain he looks downright pitiful, actually, which isn't very attractive, but who cares, it's not like he was aiming to make out with any of his friends anyway. While York starts the next spin, Wash scans the circle of his potential partners. Carolina's let her hair down tonight and she's smirking at something North's whispering to her, the line of her shoulders and spine relaxed. Donut, half climbing into Simmons' lap on the couch, is swapping spritzer bottles and sloppy cheek kisses with Kaikaina, who's been forced by Grif to sit out with him after the York incident. Church only has eyes for Tex, and South's still scowling into her ripped jeans and very obviously not making eye contact with the other blonde across the circle. Oh, there's also:

"Tucker!" York calls, lifting the bottle to catcalls. "Right this way."

Fuuuuck his life.

From the unimpressed look Tucker sends in his direction, Wash can tell they feel the same way. Anyone else would have been preferable. He ducks into the closet and promptly sits in one corner, among the mismatched gloves and a small stack of cotton bathmats. Three seconds later York leads Tucker in and sets his watch, leaving them with a wink and a "See you in seven minutes, boys." The door locks behind him.

They spend a moment side-eyeing each other, while trying to pretend they're doing otherwise. Even dressed casually, even with his slightly gangly limbs and his scuffed shoes and long eyelashes, Tucker looks good. He carries himself well, effortlessly, like he has complete awareness of his presence and its effect on other people. Right now, his mouth is twisted in consternation as he glances at Wash from his peripheral vision.

The silence, both inside and outside, because of course everyone out there is eavesdropping, lasts several ticks, until Tucker can't stand it.

"Alright, did I piss someone off in a previous life, because _come on_ , stuck with _you_? What are the odds?" Tucker blurts out from his seat on an island of loose batting. 

"I know math isn't your strong suit, but even you should be able to figure this one out," Wash snarks back. His blood pressure is already rising, and it's been half a minute.

"It was a rhetorical question, you douchebag! You ever hear of those? There, that's another example for you."

"Ooh, a four-syllable word - I'm impressed, I'd have thought that was beyond your comprehension level."

"Hey, I might not be an honors student like you, but that doesn't mean I'm dumb!"

"You do a stellar job of trying to convince people otherwise."

"Oh, wow, real fucking mature, dude. Stay classy," Tucker snaps, and even in this dark, cramped space, Wash can see the flash of real hurt that flickers through his eyes. Despite the blood coursing through his veins, leaving his skin hot and his fingers antsy, Wash feels the small rush of shame that hits when Tucker's expression shutters. His comments had been uncalled for, and he wants to apologize, he really does, but that last tenacious strand of stubbornness in him knots up his words, leaving them unshapely and too large in his mouth.

"...okay, I was kind of being a dick, but if you hadn't begun-" _apologize, apologize, just say you're sorry goddammit_ , "-hadn't started off antagonizing me, then maybe-"

Tucker jumps to his feet, stabbing his finger in accusation at Wash. The hazy light of the closet catches on the dust particles in the air and the frizzy edges of Tucker's dreads, haloing dimly around him. "Are you kidding me? We both knew we were going to end up here - even if I'd kept my mouth shut, you would've started it instead."

That feeling of shame is drowned out by the pounding of Wash's heartbeat, angry and insistent, running taut through his whole body. His words, ugly and spiteful, come pouring right out. "No, unlike you, I actually have some semblance of self-control. We could've spent this stupid game having a civil conversation, but you couldn't help yourself. You just had to open with a snide comment, didn't you?"

"I just said what we were both thinking! You don't, you've never-" And in that moment, Tucker's voice cracks, and he looks down and away, his eyes dark with some emotion Wash can't identify. He's never seen Tucker like this before, folding in on himself, deflated, vulnerable. Not because of him.

When Tucker speaks again, his tone is tired. Restrained. "Look, I know you hate me, I know you've always hated me, and I don't want to ruin CT's party, but fuck this. I'm outta here." He knocks loudly against the door, calling, "York, let me out. I know you guys have been listening in, so just- just open the door, please." He doesn't look back at Wash, not while they wait for York to unlock the door, not when he's walking out of the closet and brushing off Church's hand at his shoulder, not when he slips out the front door after a hushed word with Connie.

The others are talking quietly among themselves when Wash exits, giving him plenty of space. Sarge comes up to offer him a cup, but he declines, pushing past Church, who gives him a pointed look, but allows him into the foyer, where Connie is straightening out the jumble of shoes.

"Check the garden," is all she says, handing him a thick aqua sweater and closing the door behind him.

Outside, the biting promise of winter haunts the air, a thin layer of frost already spidering over the crumbling leaves on the ground. Wash pulls his hood up and takes a sharp breath. The cold is a shock to his system, quickly chilling him down to his bones, when what felt like seconds earlier, he'd been burning. He exhales, and inhales, and exhales, trying to let it all out. Releasing every part of him that had been so incensed, so destructive. His mind is still a mess, parsing through that final sentence again and again, attempting desperately to catalog that hurt into something he can understand, but it's not working. He can't understand.

Did he cause that pain?

How?

He walks briskly around the side of Connie's house, cutting through the trimmed lawn until he reaches the dying stalks demarcating the edge of the garden. Tucker is lying flat in the dirt, head nestled in the fallen leaves. He's tossing acorns at the tree by his feet, unflinching as they bounce back down on him. Wash stops a few feet short of him, unsure of whether or not to close the distance; Tucker, hearing his footsteps, waves a handful of acorns in his direction.

"I don't want to talk about it, Church," he says, unclenching his hand and letting everything rain down. Under the back porch light, Wash can see the suppressed chill shivering down Tucker's arm. 

"Neither do I, really," he says after one more deep breath. At the sudden tension in Tucker's shoulder's after hearing his voice, he tosses the sweater over the other boy's face. Tucker shifts upward, clawing the fabric off his head and turning to look at Wash's feet, his eyes still wary. Still hurt.

"Can I...?" Wash gestures at the spot next to Tucker, who shrugs aggressively and starts yanking his sweater on. Lowering himself slowly down, he waits until Tucker has finished ensconcing himself in his shirt before speaking.

"I'm sorry." It's so simple to say; why couldn't he do it before? Tucker stops picking at the dead grass and finally their gazes meet. "What I said earlier, I didn't mean it. I don't think you're stupid at all - I just get so _frustrated_ whenever I'm around you, that I act like, like-"

"Like a douche?" Tucker's mouth twitches up in amusement for a second, before it falls closed again. "Like you hate me?"

"But I don't!" Wash blurts, desperate to rectify this misconception that Tucker's built. To bridge the seemingly always present divide between them. "Maybe I hate the way you don't try, or how you waste your energy presenting yourself the way you do when you're so much more than that, but I've never hated you. Not like you hate me."

"When have I ever said I hate you?" Tucker asks, brow creasing.

Wash laughs incredulously. "Literally all the time? You said it yesterday when I told you your socks were mismatched. And the day before that when I asked you why there weren't any vegetables in your lunch."

"Cause that's a weird thing to ask somebody! Why the hell do you want to know?"

"It's important at our age to keep a balanced diet! The healthiest thing you've eaten all week is the vegan carrot cake you swiped out of Doc's hands! And don't get me started on your physical condition, god, you'd think that-"

Tucker smacks Wash's gesticulating hands away from him. "This! This is exactly why you piss me off so much! One second you're going on about some shit like you actually _care_ , and then the next it's back to lecturing me about my life choices, as if I really needed more reminders about how I'm failing as a human being!"

His voice pitching up at the ends, Wash hastilty responds, "That's not what I'm trying to imply! I just worry about you. I know we're not exactly on the best of terms, but that doesn't mean I don't care-" but he's interrupted by Tucker planting his hands firmly against his chest and shoving hard, his eyes furious.

"If you care so much, then why the fuck can't you stand to be in the same room as me for more than ten minutes? Why do you always scramble for some lame excuse to escape? I'm not oblivious, Wash! You think I haven't noticed that I'm the reason you always leave? Don't fucking tell me you don't hate me when we can't even exist in the same space. Just don't."

Releasing a shaky breath, Tucker draws back, retreating into himself again, leaving Wash to stare up at him from the ground, bewildered by the force of his emotion. He'd never known just how much he apparently _mattered_ to Tucker. This autumn night, in the dark under the waning November moon, in the silence and the cold, Wash finally understands for the first time where they went so wrong.

Gently, evenly, so as not to agitate Tucker more, he murmurs, "I only wanted to make things easier for you." Tucker looks askance at him from behind his sleeves, where he's cradled his head. Wash doesn't break eye contact as he continues. "You always seemed so angry whenever I was around, so I thought I'd just help us both out and...remove myself from the situation."

Tucker squints at him. "You're telling me you leave because you don't want me to feel awkward? Seriously?"

Wash can't help the humorless laugh that slips out. "Do you know what it's like to know you're the one who's ruined someone's day? To know that the reason they stop smiling is because you've entered the room? To come to the decision that trying to reach out to them is never going to work, so it's better to just do them the favor of staying away? I just never thought it'd backfire so hard."

"I'll show you something hard," Tucker mutters reflexively, drawing a hand through his dreads in frustration as he watches the wind card through the branches above. After a minute, when he turns back to face Wash, he seems almost annoyed. "So let me get this straight. I don't like you 'cause you always ditch me, which you do because you think I don't like you, when really I'm just mad that you can't stop handing out shitty life lessons because you _worry_ about me?"

Wash mulls it over for a second, then snorts. "Yeah. That pretty much sums it up."

"That is. Like. The stupidest thing I've ever said out loud," Tucker says, eyes wide in horrified amazement. "What the fuck is wrong with us?"

"Do you want the abridged list, or do you think you've got time for the full one?"

"How about neither?" Tucker replies, and he almost looks entertained. Almost. Wash is momentarily stunned at how natural it feels right now, to sit here and talk, as if they hadn't been fighting a minute ago, or every day for the last two years. He's struck by how easy it could be, to get used to this. Being civil. Communicating. Perhaps even being friends.

Tucker's voice shakes him from his musing. "Hey, uh, for what it's worth. I don't hate you either. And you're not that much of a dick. No worse than the rest of them, in any case. And I could probably stand to listen to your advice more. Once in a while." Tucker's purposefully staring off into the middle distance, avoiding eye contact. Okay, so it might take some time to patch up all the little cuts and emotional bruises they've left on each other over the years. Still, this is the most enlightened conversation they've had in a long time.

"Apology accepted," Wash says. "And if you're willing, I'd like to try and start over with you."

"Start over? It's not like we got divorced, dude," Tucker teases, and Wash rolls his eyes, ignoring the slight glimmer of happiness that lights up in his chest at that small victory.

"You know what I mean. We've spent so much time being unhappy with each other because we were too stubborn to talk about our issues; I think we could at least stop bickering so much if we put in some minimal effort to communicate properly."

"I dunno, sounds kinda girly to me," Tucker hedges, but at Wash's stern look he surrenders. "Okay, fine, I'll give it a try if you do. Happy?"

"Actually, yeah. I am." They share a look, a barely there smile between the two of them each, and this time, Wash is sure. They can work this out.

The cold is starting to seep through Wash's hoodie, and he can't help the shudder that runs down his back. With his elbow, Tucker jabs Wash in the arm, and jerks his head at the house. "You wanna head back in?"

"Yeah, I guess we should. What do you want to tell them?"

Another mischievous almost-smile. "That we kissed and made up. Literally."

"Ha. I don't think we can sell it," Wash says, pushing back against Tucker as he stands up, who rolls over with a short laugh, before getting up to follow him. "Not yet, at least."

"Wait, what?" Tucker splutters, but Wash has already turned his back, walking across the yard and hiding his grin. Maybe things will go more smoothly than he expects. This is a good start.


	4. we don't have a urinal in the laundry room

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read this and wonder if it's a secretly a Southlina story in disguise, I'd like to confirm that yes, you are absolutely correct. Also, apologies for the tragic lack of "wash"/laundry puns!

Three in the morning is the ideal time for certain circumstances: absolute silence in the library, the final fresh slice from the greasy corner pizza joint, meeting hardcore partiers in the streets who are just starting to find their way home, and doing laundry.  
  
Perfect laundry time.  
  
Wash used to try to juggle his household tasks in between evening seminars, rehearsal, and language lab homework, which was a mistake. He'd return from a lecture only five minutes behind schedule to find his clothes in a damp, wrinkled pile on the bench next to discarded detergent jugs and misplaced club t-shirts. People desperate for clean socks were brutal. Unforgiving.  
  
Everything changed once he trained himself not to sleep. It was like reaching enlightenment; suddenly, there were just so many hours in the day. So much time to get things done!  
  
("Yeah, have fun losing your sanity and dying," South scoffs, over her triple shot latte.  
  
"It's not so bad once you get used to it," Carolina shrugs while scraping the excess mayo from her sandwich. "You just need to know your limits." She wipes the knife carefully on a napkin then reaches over and bisects South's PB&J at a clean diagonal.  
  
"Knooow your limiiiiits," South mimics with a sneer, taking a vicious bite of her sandwich.)  
  
One night, after putting out the recycling before he returned to his room to finish his abstract due at 8:40 the next day, Wash noticed one very important thing. The laundromat was empty. Poking his head in, he could see one dryer tumbling away, churning up a small cloud of noise in the empty room. Otherwise, the place was deserted.  
  
He had run back to his apartment, grabbing his hamper and laptop and lugging it all out the door gracelessly, without any fear of waking Maine, who had conked out at the kitchen table in front of a physics video. Sitting on the cheap carpeting under the glaring fluorescent lights of the laundromat, Wash finished his abstract in the record time of one rinse cycle. Halfway through his HIST3240 readings, a guy in a bathrobe, flip-flops, and sunglasses walked in, tinny music playing from the headphones around his neck. He gave Wash a nod in acknowledgement as he strolled over to the dryer, which had stopped a few minutes ago. With the ease of someone who'd never faced the horrors of fending off a competitor at peak traffic, the guy packed up his canvas bag and left, with another head-tilt toward Wash as he closed the door, which he replied to with a short wave. Wash chalked the encounter up to the camaraderie of people caught in the late-night liminal spaces of college existence. At 4:42, Wash returned home, triumphant, with a head full of knowledge and a basket full of gloriously fresh clothes. That was the beginning of the rest of his life.  
  
\--  
  
The first several times, Wash stays in the laundromat to do his work while he waits. Once or twice, there's some other people who trickle in, but the only person he sees on the regular is the kid he met that first night, always wearing a bathrobe, always nodding at Wash. He assumes the guy must also have reached the same conclusion he did: that staying up just to do his laundry is way less hassle than fighting the madding crowd. They never exchange any words, but Wash develops a sort of affinity for him nonetheless. Solidarity among the late night people.   
  
This new schedule really seems to be working out for Wash as well, until the day he falls asleep in his pudding while listening to York tell the tale of Wyoming's nerf gun/a capella concert/fireworks debacle. South cackles and sticks a french fry to his face. Carolina says he should just go to the laundromat at 10 pm, but she has no idea what she's talking about. Marching band practice, the Jewish Student Union meeting, and the sustainability club all end at 9:30. It'll be a slaughter if he doesn't wait it out. Maybe it's time to change tack.  
  
That night he takes a pillow down with him instead of a textbook. Bathrobe kid is putting quarters in the dryer when Wash enters; Wash nods, but the guy raises an eyebrow instead of nodding back.  
  
"Got to you, didn't it?" bathrobe says, starting up his machine.  
  
"Sorry, what?" Wash asks, stupidly.  
  
"The weird hours. Some people just can't hack it," bathrobe replies, squatting down to peer into the machine and watch his clothes start turning. Satisfied with what he sees, he straightens up and smirks at Wash. "I thought you could handle it, but...another one bites the dust."  
  
Wash draws himself up to his full height, indignant. "I can handle it fine, thank you very much. I just needed to...restrategize," he says, shaking his pillow.  
  
Bathrobe tilts his head back and pushes his sunglasses up into his dreads, squinting at Wash, appraising him. "Sweatpants, check. Raccoon eyes, check. Cave-dweller aura, check. Yeah, you look like you might have what it takes. I guess we'll find out next week, won't we?" He grins suddenly: a quick flash of white teeth. It makes his nose crinkle and his dark eyes soften and Wash's brain goes  _huh, he's kind of cute, isn't he?_  
  
Wash's mouth isn't that much more with it, so it goes, "It's a date."  
  
That garners him a short laugh. "Hell yeah it is. See you then. If I don't show up in your dreams first," bathrobe finishes with a wink, and saunters out the door. Wash stares for a second too long after his exit, before shaking himself to action.   
  
After starting up the washer and setting an alarm on his phone, he curls up next to the dryer, trying to ignore the lint all over the floor. He naps soundly knowing that he's finished everything he could have (and put off til tomorrow everything that could hold another day), and wakes up, sort of refreshed, after 50 minutes to dry his clothes. The leftmost dryer doesn't tumble well, the second one has an inconsistent heat setting, and the fourth always smells a little off, so Wash pulls open the third and starts loading his clothes up. He stops when he notices something at the back of the dryer. Reaching in deep, he pulls out a pair of teal plaid boxers.  
  
A little sleep-addled still, he stares at the garment in his hands for a full minute, trying to understand its secrets. Did the bathrobe guy leave it behind? Wash has noticed that he also always picks the third dryer, and he's probably the only other person who's been in here in the last hour. But Wash doesn't know anything about him, besides his laundry habits. He supposes he could just hold onto the thing until next week and return it then, but that seems kind of creepy somehow. Then again, wouldn't it be creepier to try and look the guy up in the hopes of giving him back his underwear? And what if it  _doesn't_  belong to bathrobe guy? How fucking weird would it be to offer some rando's underpants to a dude whose name you don't even know, in the dead of night? But it's not like he can just throw them out. That's wasteful and rude. Should he just leave them here? No, but nothing left behind in the laundromat survives for longer than a day.   
  
He makes the executive decision to worry about it later and stuffs it into his clean hamper before tossing the rest of his clothes in to dry.  
  
\--  
  
Four days later, Wash isn't any closer to a resolution. Maine shook his head when he saw Wash sealing the boxers away in a freezer bag, and gave him a wide berth on his way to the fridge. The baggie had been left on his tattered armchair, causing North to stifle a laugh when he stopped by to drop off his stats notes. Worst of all was York, who said he knew a guy in the CompSci department who could track down Wash's bathrobe kid for a small fee. With unhelpful friends and a looming project due, Wash forgets about the stupid underwear until laundry day comes around again.  
  
Actually, he almost leaves it behind, but for South scrounging around his room for hidden snacks while he tries to pull his hamper out of his tiny creaky-doored closet.  
  
"Wash, whose the fuck are these?" she says, a mixture of delight and venom tinging her voice as she dangles the bag from her nail bitten fingers. "Are you  _seeing_ someone? Is this your idea of going steady? Keeping your boyfriend's underwear in-"  
  
Wash snatches the bag away. "Give me those. There's shredded wheat in the cupboard if you're really that hungry."  
  
South makes a disgusted face that's identical to the one North pulls whenever he goes to York's favorite bar, not that either twin will admit to it. "God, you might actually be worse than Lina. At least she eats Froot Loops."  
  
The closet finally gives way, releasing the hamper into the open. Wash begins dragging it out of his room, pointedly trying to direct South out along with him. "Why are you even awake right now? Go home and gorge yourself on the rest of Carolina's kale chips."  
  
"I already ate them all," she tells him miserably, holding his pillow as he locks the apartment. He does it out of habit more than anything, since Maine could take down any intruders in his sleep. "I even drank all that stupid chayote soup she made."  
  
"Hah. She said you would. Look, she's coming back tomorrow, so just suck it up for a few more hours and go to sleep. You know she's probably going to buy groceries on the way home anyway." South responds by bopping Wash on the head with his own pillow and skulking off. He has the most ungrateful friends.  
  
  
It isn't until Wash is entering the laundromat that he remembers he's still clutching the boxer bag in his left hand, which is of course also the same moment that bathrobe looks up from the dryer and spots him. Bathrobe's sunglasses are hanging from his collar so Wash can see the way his eyes light up when they see him. Damn. That alone shouldn't elevate his heart rate. Maybe he drank too much caffeine this afternoon.  
  
"Hey, man, I was wondering if you'd- wait, are those my boxers?" The look on bathrobe's face turns to something else, something between relief and amusement.  
  
What even is the correct answer here? "Probably?" he says, holding out the bag, trying not to look like the kind of dude who hoards other people's intimates. "Sorry, I didn't know for sure if they were yours, so I took them just in case, since I assumed I'd see you again this week. I swear I didn't do anything strange to them." His back tenses up, waiting for bathrobe to react with disgust.  
  
But the kid just laughs, grabbing the bag out of Wash's hands. He admires the way his boxers have been folded up neatly and sealed airtight behind plastic, before shaking his head. "I can't believe this stupid plan actually worked. You're pretty reliable, Bismarck," he tells Wash with a smile.  
  
What? Who?  
  
Apparently Wash had expressed this confusion aloud, because bathrobe claps him on the arm, saying, "Sup, I'm Tucker, resident laundromat hottie."  
  
"People call me Wash," he manages in response. He sounds more flabbergasted than someone should when introducing themselves; the shiver running up his arm is awfully distracting.  
  
"Oh, good, that's easier than Otto von Bismarck. It's, that's what your book was about, so that's kinda what I've been calling you in my head," Tucker says, tugging at his dreads with an air of vague embarrassment. It's the first time he's looked anything other than totally self-assured.  
  
"I don't have any room to judge. I've been calling you 'bathrobe' the whole time," Wash confesses.  
  
"That's a really shitty nickname, dude," Tucker tells him with a grin, so Wash fakes a scoff.  
  
"Would you have preferred shades? Headphones? Cute laundry buddy?" That last one slips out unbidden, and he can feel his skin turning pink.  
  
But Tucker doesn't laugh, he just flashes that smile again, all sharp teeth and warm eyes. "Could be your cute coffee buddy too, if you're ever on campus in the mornings. I'm usually in the PoliSci department."  
  
"I, yeah, I do that. Coffee, that is. I drink it." It has only just dawned on Wash that Tucker is hitting on him; his brain reacts accordingly by completely fritzing out.  
  
"You might actually be less smooth than the lamest guy I know, but you're in luck," Tucker says, rifling through his pockets in order to locate a small slip of paper that he hands to Wash. "You've got an appointment with Dr. Lavernius Tucker, PhD, this Wednesday, 9 a.m. sharp. Sharpish. I dunno, I'll probably be awake by then. Look for me in the Hargrove building if I don't show."  
  
Scribbled on the paper is a phone number, which: "Do you always carry around copies of your number in your bathrobe?" Tucker just winks at him as he starts packing away the remainder of his clean clothes. "And there's no way you have a doctorate, we look like we're the same age!"  
  
"Doctor of Love, baby! Meet me for coffee, and I'll show you just how certified I am." With those words, Tucker heads for the exit, canvas bag hefted over his shoulder, nudging Wash with an elbow on the way out. "And watch out for your pillow."  
  
Wash looks down, and indeed, the corner of his pillow has fallen into a puddle of detergent. Hastily, he lifts it up and wipes away most of it with a dryer sheet, but when he turns around to toss the sheet out, Tucker's already gone. A glance at his watch tells him that he better get a move on if he wants to get back home before 5 a.m., so he hustles to the washing machine. But as he reaches down into his hamper, he notices the familiar plastic bag sitting right on top, Tucker's boxers still pristinely folded inside.  
  
Son of a bitch.  
  
For a split second, Wash considers running after him, but he thinks back to their earlier conversation. "Plan," Tucker had said. These stupid boxers were Tucker's insurance that Wash would show up at the laundromat, and now, here they were in his possession yet again. He looks at the scrap of paper sitting innocuously on his pillow, and thinks,  _Why the hell not_ _?_  
  
Tapping the digits into his phone, he shoots off a text.  
  
**So what does it mean if I'm experiencing sudden onset aphasia and tachycardia when I'm around you?**  
  
He gets a third of his clothes into the machine before his phone chimes once, twice, three times.  
  
**it means u better show up on wednesday u nerd**  
**p sure i kno what u have but i think i better give you a physical just in case**  
  
**p.s. dont worry i think ur cute too**  
  
Wash suppresses a laugh, and puts another shirt in the machine. Three in the morning is even better than he thought.


	5. freelancer power, activate!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some quick warnings: this story contains canon-typical levels of violence and crude language; it's not particularly super for a superhero!au; and it hinges on a beloved but flimsy premise. Also, it's terribly long. If you're okay with all that, then I hope it's to your satisfaction.
> 
> Thanks to everyone who's been reading!

"Did you just punch that guy's skull out of his head?" Tucker's hands are numb from being tied behind his back for so long, but he makes a pretty good effort to hold his pen against his notepad.  
  
"Do you start all interviews with questions like this?" the vigilante asks, his voice arch. "And no, that doesn't seem physically possible." He looks Tucker over briskly, checking for injuries, before zip-tying the unconscious Insurrectionist to the barely functional radiator. Something sounds from outside, down where the ramshackle courtyard is. Tucker follows the vigilante over to the window, where they watch several cop cars peel up to the sidewalk, narrowly dodging the pile of K.O'd Insurrectionists lying around. "Well, that's my cue. You should take the stairs back down. The elevator's a little crowded right now."  
  
Tucker frowns, waving his notepad. "Can't I squeeze in a few questions? Make my kidnapping worth my while?"  
  
"Sorry, I've got to get down to the waterfront," is the vigilante's response, as he hefts himself out the window and leaps across to the ledge on the other corner of the building.  
  
"Wait, at least tell me who the hell you are!" Tucker yells out the window.  
  
The vigilante pauses at the edge of the roof, thinking for a moment. "You can call me Recovery. Stay safe, citizen," he finishes awkwardly, and then he's gone, taking off over the rooftop.  
  
"Your sign-off sucks!" Tucker shouts into the wind.  
  
\--  
  
Wash jumps up from his desk when Tucker enters Accounting, and immediately starts checking his head for injuries, before moving down to his collarbone. Tucker tries not to lean into the touch too much. There are boundaries even he's not stupid enough to cross.  
  
"I know I'm all for exhibitionism, but maybe work isn't the smartest place for it," he grits out as Wash glares at a bruise on his sternum, brushing dry fingertips over the mottled skin.  
  
"Tucker, the entire floor has seen you naked at least twice already," Wash mutters, straightening out Tucker's shirt, seemingly satisfied with his well-being. Which means the lecture's forthcoming. "You got lucky this time, you know that right?" he snaps. "One day, they're not going to need you alive, and it's going to be your body that the cops pick up at the scene. Have you ever given a thought to what that would do to us?"  
  
"I know it'd get Church to finally quit riding me (bow chicka- ow, dammit Wash) about my deadlines," Tucker retorts.  
  
But Wash isn't having any of his cheek. Behind the glasses, Wash's gray eyes are furious, to the point where he is stricken momentarily speechless, reduced to spluttering half-formed curses. When he regains his words, the tirade begins again. "I am being so fucking serious right now, Tucker! Do you think Church can just  _replace_ you? How do you think Caboose will handle it? How am I supposed to-" Wash cuts his rant short, but he looks like he's about to have a rage aneurysm.  
  
Tucker puts a stop to it by grabbing Wash's wrist and holding him still. "Hey, look at me. I'm fine, see? A-okay. The guy didn't even mean to hurt me; I just got bumped when I was trying to escape." He keeps his voice even and his grip steady, waiting for Wash's pulse to slow. It takes a minute, but they get there. Once the anger leaves Wash's face, he just looks tired.  
  
"I know you're just trying to do your job, but promise me you'll be careful," he says quietly. The space between them has shrunk down to a mere foot, the sounds of people typing and chatting around them dimmed to a white noise surrounding their little bubble.  
  
He's just worried about a friend, Tucker tells himself. That's what this is. Like always. Don't read too much into it.  
  
So he puts on his best charming smile, releases Wash's wrist, and promises, "Nothing too dangerous. I swear."  
  
\--  
  
Grif is normally a good driver, but that doesn't account for explosions, which is why they all start screaming like children when the car veers off the street.  
  
"Fuck fucking goddamn shit, I thought you said you and Sarge fixed the car, Donut!" Grif shrieks as they careen down the alley sidewalk, trying to escape the Insurrectionist vehicle chasing them down. Some metallic object falls off their car, clanging violently against a streetlamp as it flies away.  
  
Donut, reaching over from the backseat to dig his fingers in a stranglehold around Tucker's neck, screams back, "I did! But that was before we installed his prototype GPS system and unbalanced everything!" He gestures toward the giant satellite jutting up through the open roof. It's covered in an odd assortment of wires and circuitboards, and its weight tilts the car heavily toward its passenger side every time they speed over an uneven cobblestone.  
  
A blast to their left starts another round of screams. Grif swerves abruptly to the left, which jostles some manner of mirrored orb off Sarge's satellite into Tucker's lap. Prying Donut's hands off, he hands off the orb, shouting, "Make that arm of yours useful! Try to hit the driver or someone!"  
  
"Tucker, no offense, but Franklin Delano Donut knows his balls, and this one is definitely not going to penetrate the windshield," Donut protests.  
  
Tucker reaches over and grabs him by the collar for a good shake when someone straight up lands on top the Insurrectionist car, stabbing a gash into the roof for a knifehold. Decked out in cyan armor fatigues, dangling from a car shooting down the road at 50 mph, there's no way she can be anything but one of the Freelancer vigilantes. She then kicks her leg through the open window from which the explosives have been flying out, taking the bombardier right in the teeth. Donut releases a whoop, almost falling out the roof as he snaps off a few pictures when Grif turns sharply again, bouncing them out onto a main street where the cops are waiting. They shudder to a stop after crashing through a barricade. The GPS falls off and almost crushes the foot of the officer who rushes over to help.  
  
The second he escapes from the car, Tucker runs back the way they came, having filched Grif's phone since his own was lost in the fracas. Grif yells something at him, but it gets lost in the noise of the crowd. Ducking back into the alleyway, he can see that the Insurrectionists have followed the path to its logical dead end, where the Freelancer is now single-handedly punching the living daylights out of each of them. He sidles along the brick walls, and pulls up the phone's camera, but seeing as he's still a good 70 yards away, he can't get much footage of use.  
  
"Didn't I tell you to stay safe?" comes a hiss from a few feet behind. Tucker spins around and chucks his pen like a dart at the intruder, who catches it easily. The modulated voice is familiar, as is the gray outfit with yellow trim: the vigilante from the kidnapping.  
  
Tucker shuffles up to him and takes his pen back, notes at the ready.  Cyan seems like she'll be busy for a while, so he might as well hit up this guy. "Good, it's just you. Recovery, right? You ready to give it to me?"  
  
"Excuse me?" the vigilante asks, sounding at a loss. He steps around Tucker so that he's positioned closer to the fight than the reporter is.  
  
"The scoop, man. Who's the chick beating the hell out of the Innies; are you affiliated with the Freelancers; what's your superhero origin story; who's your celebrity crush, you know, that kinda shit."  
  
"How could you tell she was a woman?" Recovery asks, because that's clearly the thing to be fixated on right now.  
  
"Trade secret. But hey, I'm a reasonable guy. You show me yours and I'll show you mine. Tell me about the raid on Bjørndal that happened last Saturday, and I'll tell you about what it's like to be up at 4 am, trying to finish an article for your asshole boss while babysitting a grown man." An anguished wail rises up at the end of the alley; Recovery grabs Tucker and begins frog marching him away from the action. "Hey! C'mon, you gotta give me something. How many guns you own. How often you get laid. Favorite kids' movie?" he wheedles, resisting the urge to comment on how up in his space the other man is.   
  
Recovery just keeps walking them, ignoring Tucker's increasingly annoying pleas until they reach a crossroads with a little side street. He gives Tucker a little push, then walks over to the fire escape. "This street should be clear. Take a right at the end there and you should end up near Dakota Square Corner." He starts climbing.  
  
"Boo," Tucker says, throwing his pen again. It misses by a good two feet.  
  
A noise that sounds almost like a laugh slips out from Recovery's masked mouth, and he stops his ascent up the ladder just long enough to call down, "I'm a good skateboarder," before disappearing over the roof.  
  
"I'm quoting you on that!" says Tucker to nobody, and writes it down, just so it doesn't seem like he's been slacking.  
  
\--  
  
"And she was gone by the time I got back, which sucked, but Donut caught a really good picture of her kicking this dude in the face," Tucker coughs out around a mouthful of stolen banana.   
  
Wash is busy inputting numbers into his calculator, so he just hums in response. Tucker takes the chance to prop his feet up on the desk, but somehow Wash can sense it, because he reaches over and knocks them back down without missing a single digit. The rest of the banana vanishes into Tucker's stomach, but Wash still isn't done with his work, which is a pain since Tucker wants lunch, dammit. Even if it's just some lame salad.  
  
"So, are you gonna wrap this up any time soon, or..."  
  
No response past the scritch of nib against paper.   
  
Fine. Time to take a page out of Kai's book. "Oh, also that other guy showed up again, y'know, the hot one? Yeah, he flew in on a flaming helicopter and rescued me from space pirates and then we banged in the alley. Four times. Once, hanging upside-down from the fire-escape, and another time up against the windows of-"  
  
"Wait, what?" Wash looks up suddenly, blinking rapidly at Tucker. Aha. Kaikaina Grif's Foolproof Method strikes again.  
  
"Lunch, that's what. Let's goooo, you can finish this shit later; Simmons doesn't need it 'til tomorrow anyway," Tucker says triumphantly, dragging a boggled malleable Wash out the door with him. He convinces himself the reason he's slightly flushed is because he's been imagining fake sex with Recovery, and not because Wash is cute when he's confused.  
  
\--  
  
"Again?!" is the first comment from Recovery, when he sees Tucker dangling from the ceiling.  
  
"Yeah, I always thought this would be more fun than it really is," Tucker says glumly. "You know, like in a sexy way."  
  
Recovery pulls the wall lever, which lowers the journalist back to the ground. Tucker's legs feel like jelly, so he wobbles even as his feet find the floor; his rescuer steadies him with an arm to the waist as he reaches up with his other hand to cut the chains with a laser knife. Even through the armored shirt, Tucker can feel that Recovery's arm is corded with muscle, held tight against his hips. Once his arms are free, Recovery sits him down on the concrete floor so that he can laser lockpick the cuffs off.  
  
"You're a trouble magnet, aren't you," Recovery says, exasperated, but the way he rubs gently at the tender ring around Tucker's wrists contradicts the irritation in his voice.   
  
"Comes with the territory, I guess," Tucker shrugs, watching Recovery rotate his hand gingerly to loosen up the tendons. The gloved hand feels cool against his chafed skin, and he makes an involuntary noise of pleasure, which gives Recovery some pause. "Sorry, I'm not normally this easy- no actually, that's a dirty lie, I'm exactly this easy. If this warehouse wasn't creepy as shit and you didn't smell like gunpowder, I'd probably be naked already," he babbles incoherently. All the blood that drained out of his arms is beginning to circulate again, and he feels weird and tingly all over.  
  
"I'm not going to have sex with you in a weapons storage warehouse," the vigilante replies drily, drawing a circle with his thumb on Tucker's wrist.  
  
"Okay, that's cool, how 'bout an interview then?"  
  
Recovery snorts. "I've got to give it to you, you're certainly the most persistent reporter I've ever met."  
  
"That deserves some sort of reward, doesn't it? Three questions. That's all I want."  
  
A sigh, followed by a glance at his fancy high-tech watch, and a longing stare at the open doorway. But instead of high-tailing it, Recovery settles back. "Alright. Three questions, on one condition." At Tucker's hasty nod, he continues, "Let me put a safety beacon on you."  
  
That isn't what Tucker expected. "What, like a tracking device? Dude, if you wanna know where I live, you could just ask."  
  
Recovery raps him on the forehead with a knuckle. "Not quite. What you'll do is put it on something inconspicuous that you always carry with you, and the next time you go and get yourself abducted, you activate it and it'll alert me to your location, so that I can rescue you."  
  
Tucker thinks it over for about half a second, then nods. "Sure, let's do it," he says holding a hand out. Recovery places the beacon on his palm; it's a tiny flat piece of metal with a switch on the side. He secures it to the back inside cover of his notepad, up in the corner. There. Officially saddled with a permanent extra-judicial babysitter. "Okay! Interview time! I know you've gotta be in cahoots with that cyan chick from last time, but are you connected to the Man in Blue?"  
  
"That's going to take a little bit to explain..."  
  
\--  
  
"Tucker!! Why do you get a super secret button? Church only gave me turtle stickers," Caboose pouts, finger poised on the switch on Tucker's notepad.  
  
"Whoa, give that back! Stop touching my stuff, Caboose, Jesus." Tucker snatches the notepad back and slides it back into his pocket, out of harm's way. Wash peers over the rim of his glasses at Tucker while cutting the crust off Caboose's sandwich, but Tucker just shrugs, and takes a bite of the stupid salad Wash made for him. There's a lot he tells these guys, but for some reason, he wants to keep this a secret, just between himself and Recovery.  
  
When Tucker keeps up his vehement chewing, Wash smiles absently at him and walks over to the trash to toss Caboose's crusts. There's something about the way he moves that jogs a lost memory in Tucker's brain, but it eludes him. Whatever. He's probably just been staring at Wash's backside too much.  
  
\--  
  
"Are you fucking kidding me?!" Recovery yells down at him, from the top of the well.  
  
"I get that you think I'm a moron, but can you save the lecture for after you get me out of this hellhole? I think I might have hypothermia," Tucker snaps back, holding on desperately to the large stone sticking out the side of the wall.  
  
"Where did you even find a well? Why would you climb down here? Was this really the best recourse?" Recovery grouses the whole time as he pulls Tucker out of the water. Tucker just flips him off while shivering.  
  
He sits in Recovery's weird superhero car, the heat blasting, while his savior has a hushed conversation outside on his Freelancer phone-thing. Unsuccessfully, he attempts to blowdry the pages of his notepad, but the air flow is too weak. He does discover, when he flicks it on, that the beacon is still functional, since something on Recovery's armor starts radiating red beams of light, causing the vigilante to almost drop his phone.  
  
"Goddamn it, Lavernius, turn that off," says Recovery as he climbs in and puts the car into drive.  
  
"Told you not to call me that. So where are we going? Your secret base?"  
  
"Actually, yes. It's pretty close by, but I'm going to need you to wear this on your head." Recovery opens up the glove compartment and takes out a black bag.  
  
Tucker's reporter-y instincts tell him to weasel his way out of it, but he's really fricking cold, and if wearing a dumb bag on his head will get him inside sooner, then he'll do it. He jams the thing on, but keeps his ears alert for any telltale signs of their location. Sadly, there's nothing beyond the ordinary city ambience.  
  
He makes to pull the bag off when Recovery escorts him out of the vehicle, but a hand placed firmly over his eyes prevents that. He allows himself to be ushered inside, down several twisting hallways, before he's released into an amazingly warm room. The first thing he does is take off the bag, and try to take a peek back down the corridor, but Recovery directs him toward a large metal table surrounded by ugly orange chairs.  
  
"Strip," is the order he receives. Tucker's eyebrows shoot up in mock surprise.  
  
"You move fast, don't you? Don't worry, I like people who know what they want. So, you gonna keep the mask on when we're doing it, or am I finally gonna get to see your face?"  
  
"Please stop talking," Recovery groans, moving away. "I'm going to go get you some new clothes. Don't leave this room unless you want to get shot by one of my trigger-happy friends," is the last warning he issues before he walks through a door to the right. Tucker's about 50/50 on whether he wants to obey that command, but another chill runs through his back, so he does the smart thing and starts taking his wet clothes off, tossing them onto the table haphazardly.  
  
When he gets down to just his underwear, he stops for a second, unsure if he wants to take that last step. Normally, he wouldn't care, but it'd be kinda lame to get killed by a paranoid superhero while naked. Right as he hooks his thumbs into the waistband of his boxers to yank them off, another door slides open, and in steps the cyan Freelancer from the car chase. Number One is what the media's been calling her, given her propensity to utterly obliterate any Insurrectionist behavior faster and with more finality than anyone else.  
  
"Don't stop on my account," she says, sounding amused, coming over to lean against the table. She's got a pink towel under her arm, a cup of hot tea in one hand, and a gigantic hot fudge sundae in the other. The tea and towel, she places in front of Tucker, before yanking up her mask just far enough that she can shovel a massive scoop of ice cream into her mouth.  
  
Tucker opts to take his underwear off but wear the towel down below instead. It's pretty obvious that neither of them have any problems with him being buck naked while she chows down on a literal gallon of ice cream, but he's pretty sure his junk is shriveled and frozen right now, and that's just not a good first impression to make.  
  
"So, hey, what's with-"  
  
"Nope, no questions from you," Number One says, gesturing with her spoon at him. "Drink your tea." He obliges; she could kill him in about 7 seconds with that spoon.  
  
A minute passes in silence, but Tucker never really could help running his mouth at the wrong times. "What flavor is it?"  
  
Number One sticks her spoon back into her mound of chocolate syrup, and purses her lips at him. "What part of no questions was unclear to you?"  
  
"Come on, what's it gonna hurt for me to know what kind of ice cream you eat?" Tucker asks, fiddling with the string of his tea bag.  
  
"I didn't know the Blood Gulch Inquirer was a gossip rag."  
  
"Hey, we're perfectly mediocre, thanks. Anyway, everybody's gotta print some fluff pieces sometimes," he whines, ignoring the fact that she knows what paper he works for.  
  
She stares him down from behind her shielded mask, and he meets her gaze without flinching. The corner of her lip twitches when he doesn't back down, and she takes another bite before saying, "If you want some real gossip, you should ask Recovery about why he's always looking out for you."  
  
Tucker blinks at her for a beat or two. "I thought he just had like a soft spot for hapless journalists or something," he says uncertainly.  
  
Number One smirks at him, putting her melting sundae down on the table and leaning in closer. "Do you really think he has the time to track every dumbass reporter who gets in over their head? How many times has it been now? Five? Six? Kid, you're pretty sharp, I'll give you that, but you're missing what's right in front of your nose."  
  
He wants to ask the right question here, to see if she's really implying what he thinks, but Recovery finally returns, a bundle of clothes in his arms.  
  
"Sorry, there's only one person here as short as you are, and her locker is a pain to bust into," he says, unfolding a pair of pants, before he looks up and notices Number One sitting on the table next to Tucker. Suspicious, he asks, "What have you two been talking about?"  
  
"Nothing," they both say simultaneously, but she's sown the seed in Tucker's brain now, and he can't stop thinking about it.  
  
Even in the car ride back to the bus stop, with a bag over his head that would ordinarily keep him complaining, Tucker's silent. It isn't until Recovery drives off that he lets out a shaky breath, leaning up against the telephone pole, staring up at the city lights.  
  
So maybe his vigilante friend has a crush on him. And Tucker genuinely  _likes_ Recovery, even though he's sort of a tight-lipped worrywart stick in the mud. So why isn't he happier about this?  
  
\--  
  
Wash waves his hand in front of Tucker's face, snapping him out of his trance. They look at his laptop screen, where the only words written are "Bat Infested Cave"; Wash raises his eyebrows and wheels Tucker's swivel chair away from his desk. "Time to call it a day. Kaikaina's been texting you pictures of her margaritas for the last ten minutes without a single response; everyone's wondering where you are."  
  
"Yeah, okay, sorry I just got kinda-"  
  
"Replaced by a pod person? You're never here later than me," Wash teases. Under the dusty lights of the editorial room, a soft glow settles around him, making his content expression even brighter. There's that hint of laugh in his tone, just under the surface, and Tucker thinks,  _so that's why_.   
  
_You bastard, I'm so hung up on you that just hearing your dumb voice is enough to give me fucking heart palpitations_ , is what Tucker doesn't say. Instead, he grabs his stuff and puts it all in his jacket pocket and gets up to stretch, making a really dramatic moan as he reaches his arms up to the ceiling.  
  
"Lemme just go fix my hair. I'll meet you outside in five," he says to Wash, who's frowning at the bit of soft tummy that shows when his dress shirt rides up.  
  
"You and your hair," says Wash, shaking his head, but he gives Tucker that little half-smile and goes on ahead.  
  
When Tucker's scrubbing his face dry with a paper towel after adjusting his braids, his notepad slips out of his overloaded pocket onto the bathroom floor. He scoops it back up, but the little beacon switch catches his eye, and he thinks back to what Number One told him. And he understands it's a bad idea, and a shitty thing to do, but he has to know.  
  
So he flips the switch and ducks out the emergency exit, and waits.  
  
He waits for a grand total of three minutes and forty-one seconds before Recovery comes dashing in, glancing around wildly, stun gun at the ready. Tucker waves from his spot by the wall.  
  
Recovery looks at him, down at his tracking mechanism, and back up again. "You...did you activate the beacon?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
Tucker can't see his face under the mask, but he assumes it must be doing something hilarious.   
  
"You do understand that this is an 'emergencies only' kind of deal, right?" Tucker nods, and Recovery makes an aborted strangling motion with his hands, then visibly forces himself to calm down. "Alright, whatever it is you need, make it quick. I do occasionally have other things to do."  
  
Sure, Tucker thinks, but you'd drop them in an instant for me, wouldn't you? There's no disturbance in sight, I'm right outside my workplace which is a block from the precinct, and you ran here in under five minutes. Why?  
  
"I need a favor," he finds himself asking, and Recovery tilts his head minutely, waiting to hear it, and the motion reminds Tucker so much of Wash that he wants to bash his head against the wall, because honestly, how far gone is he? When is he ever going to stop getting that hopeless, stomach-dropping feeling that swoops up into his throat whenever he stands at the doorway of Accounting and watches the pale rose hues of sunset fall over Wash's face as he's scribbling some numbers in the margins of his spreadsheets? When is he going to stop wanting to run his fingers through the graying roots of Wash's hair when the other man is glaring down at him for doing something reckless? When is he going to learn that someone doesn't just suddenly fall in love with you just because you've been waiting for them for three years? That even if it pains you to go a day without seeing them, that even if your greatest accomplishment of the week is making them laugh, that even if they're the only thing you can think about when you're sprinting for your life down a deserted road with death on your heels, you might only ever be that friend who gets up to too much trouble.  
  
Today. Today is the day he's going to let go, because Tucker's never claimed to be smart, no, but if there's one thing he knows, it's when the battle is lost. Pack up your gun and go home. The war was never yours to fight.  
  
It's about time you find someone who will love you back.  
  
So even though it feels like a betrayal - which is pure sentimentality, because how could you be faithful to someone who was never yours - he asks the question.  
  
"Can I kiss you?"  
  
Recovery falters, buying time by strapping his gun back to his hip. When he speaks, his modulated voice seems unsteady. "I...don't think that would be a good idea."  
  
That's not exactly a rejection, so Tucker presses on. "One kiss. That's all I want." His breath stops in his chest, as he waits.  
  
For a long moment, Recovery just looks at him, before turning away, down at the bustling evening street at the front of Blood Gulch. Then he steps forward, crowding Tucker into the shadows of the wall, and whispers, "Alright. One kiss, on one condition." Tucker lets out the breath he was keeping in, and nods.  
  
"Keep your eyes closed."  
  
He lets his eyes fall shut. The quiet rustle he hears must be Recovery pulling his mask up, but he doesn't expect the sensation of a bare hand at his waist. The first press of their lips is tentative, until Tucker changes the angle of his head, rising up a little on his toes. Then Recovery's mouth slots against his in a way that just seems to  _fit_ , and Tucker relaxes against the arm holding him up, as Recovery presses deeper.  
  
And just as Tucker's starting to think that perhaps this could work, maybe he could finally let go of Wash, his eyelids flutter, and quick as anything, Recovery has pulled out of reach. He puts off opening his eyes for but a second, hoping that for some strange reason the mask is still off, but when he does, Recovery is nowhere to be seen.  
  
Tucker thumps his head against the wall. If anything, he's stuck with more problems than ever before.  
  
\--  
  
"Dude, what did you do?" Church asks, tossing a paper airplane into Tucker's workspace. He bats it out of the air with a lazy hand.  
  
"Hey, it's not my fault Simmons can't hold his liquor," Tucker disclaims, making a revolution in his chair. Sure, he could've withheld the vodka, but he knows better than to stop a drinking bet.  
  
"No, idiot, it's not that. What did you do to piss off Wash?" Church's question brings Tucker's swiveling to a stop.  
  
"Wait, why's he mad at me this time?" Tucker cycles the events of the last couple of days back through his mind, but he can't think of anything that stands out.  
  
"All I know is he gave Doc your salad when they ran into each other in the break room. I mean, I guess I just assumed it was your salad? I don't keep track of what you eat. Caboose is bad enough." With a flick of his wrist, Church sends a pencil up into the ceiling.  
  
Tucker narrows his eyes. Come to think of it, he hadn't found the usual tupperware with his name on it in the fridge this morning. "What the hell?"  
  
Another pencil launches into the ceiling. "That's what I said! I figure he's pretty mad if he's not forcing you to eat all that healthy shit. Did you guys break up again?" If previously Tucker had only been mildly irritated, Church's words serve to remind him of the events of yesterday night. Trying to drink the feelings away with the guys had not been a successful venture.  
  
"Shut up, Church," Tucker snaps, sliding back to his desk to resume typing angrily.   
  
  
By the time his lunch break arrives, Tucker's even more worked up, because it's not like Wash to act like this. The guy is all about scolding people, so what the fuck's with this passive-aggressive bullshit? He spitefully eats four and a half candy bars in order to undo any good to his system those damn salads have ever caused (he can't make it all the way through the fifth one; Grif happily finishes it for him), and then spends the next hour immensely regretting his chocolate binge.  
  
When it's seven minutes to six p.m. Tucker slams his laptop shut and storms off out of the office, charging off toward Accounting. An extremely public shouting match ought to make him feel better about the hot mess he calls his personal life. Simmons, who he passes on his way in, waves weakly, still queasy, but he just pushes past, rolling his sleeves up to, like, punch Wash if he has to. He can't think of any conceivable reason it would come to that, but he's so ready to do it: just sock him one in the arm and see his stupid cute freckly face contort in confusion. It doesn't help the situation that even when he's this mad he still can't stop thinking about how much he likes the bastard.  
  
Wash is flipping through several files, his brow creased in concentration and his glasses pushed up into his blond hair. When he sees Tucker approaching like a lightning storm, an unreadable expression crosses his face and he puts his glasses down on the table.  
  
"Where's my damn salad?" is what Tucker opens with. Some people glance up from their papers, but when they notice it's just them, they lose interest and get back to work.  
  
"Oh. I thought Doc looked like he could use a boost, and I know he'd enjoy it, so I gave it to him. I thought you'd just go out and buy lunch with Church." Wash straightens out his files and places them aside.  
  
"But it's  _my_ salad! You can't just give it away!" Which is a petulant reason, but Tucker doesn't actually have a better defense.  
  
Wash throws his hands up in annoyance. "You don't even like the salad!"  
  
"Just because I don't like it doesn't mean I don't want it!" Tucker shouts back, moving in close, which prompts Wash to stand up and loom over him.  
  
"Well, here in  _reality_ , where things  _make sense_ , when someone makes it clear that they don't like something, that thing is no longer forced upon them," Wash yells, his pitch rising rapidly.   
  
"That's clearly never stopped you before!"   
  
Bizarrely, Wash reacts like he's been slapped. He takes a step back, then rubs his hand briskly over his eyes, looking down and away. "I didn't...you're right. I'm sorry. It was completely inappropriate for me to conduct myself like that. To put that kind of unwanted pressure on you."  
  
Tucker stares at him, weirded out by the drastic change in tone. "No, hey, they weren't that bad. For salads. I mean you're right, I didn't really  _like_ them, but you bothered to make them for me; I wasn't just gonna throw them out." He holds his hands out in what he hopes is a calming gesture. If Wash is about to have some sort of salad breakdown he doesn't know how to contain it.  
  
The frustration that Wash is projecting is almost palpable, but he doesn't do anything except look at Tucker, lost for words. His expression is bitter, verging on upset, but Tucker doesn't get why. He's about to ask, about to reach out, but that's when the emergency siren starts blaring.  
  
Everyone in the room freezes, waiting for an announcement from upstairs, but Jensen screams first. "The Insurrectionists!" she wails, pointing out the window, where dozens of insurgents are flooding into Armonia National Bank across the street. Half the room hurries over to watch, and the rest grab their phones and begin urgently making phone calls.  
  
Church's voice comes over the loudspeaker, sounding harried. "Alright everybody, just sit your asses down. We've been told by the cops to just stay in here until the coast is clear, so just sit tight until I tell you lockdown is over."  
  
Lockdown, Tucker mouths to himself, dashing a glance back out the window where the Insurrectionists are setting up explosives by the bank wall. There's a good view here, but it's not quite good enough. Someone down there looks like the Insurrectionist leader who was spotted at the Sangheili Temple a while back, and Tucker intends to find out who the hell he is. There's an exit about a thirty second run from this room; he'd bet his entire career that the Blood Gulch Inquirer's security team hasn't got it covered yet. He chances a fleeting glimpse at Wash, who's luckily preoccupied watching the attack in the street and tapping his fingers restlessly against his thigh. Good, he can pull this off.  
  
Tucker takes a step back, behind Simmons, and makes a break for it, making it to the doorway before Simmons and Wash notice.  
  
"Lavernius Tucker, don't you fucking dare!" he hears trailing behind him as escapes down the hallway. The door is forty feet away, and the security guard is just turning to walk down the stairs perpendicular to him. The guard startles when he passes, and starts giving chase, but he shoots the guy a wink and then he's pushing out of the building.  
  
He doesn't stop until he's rounded the corner around the insurance place to the left of Blood Gulch. His plan is to cut across the street to the cluster of stores next to Armonia National, and hunker down by the back entrance of the adjacent cafe. Phone in hand, Tucker jogs into the fleeing crowd, keeping his head down and out of sight. He manages to sneak as far as the cafe, but in a stroke of bad luck, an Insurrectionist grunt hanging around the marble columns of the bank sees him in the shadows.  
  
"Guys, isn't that the reporter that keeps following us around?" the grunt says to his buddy, who starts calling someone on his walkie-talkie as they come chasing after him.  
  
Tucker thinks briefly about switching on his beacon, but he's probably not Recovery's favorite person right now. So he'll just have to go it alone. Running along the perimeter of the bank is a criminally idiotic decision, but he can't backtrack now and lead the Insurrectionists straight into a crowd of panicking civilians, so he does it anyway. Miraculously, all those hours he was forced to go jogging with Wash and Caboose seem to be paying off, because he pulls ahead of the men pursuing him. But, as always, because he can never catch a break, some other Insurrectionists choose that moment to exit the bank from a side door. They see him escaping from their cohorts, put two and two together, and just like that Tucker's got a fricking mob running him down.  
  
"Shit, shit, shit, worst decision ever, what the hell is wrong with me," he groans, skidding to a stop in front of the service entrance to the hotel behind the bank. No luck; the door is locked. As the men close in on him, he drops his phone, puts up his fists, and tries to pretend that his biggest regret of the year is letting Donut pick out his work clothes, and not any of that other ongoing bullshit.  
  
Swinging out hard, Tucker lands a hit on the insurgent that reaches him first, but it doesn't do much to deter his assailant, who grabs a handful of his braids and yanks. Tucker hisses like a rabid raccoon, trying to slash the Insurrectionist across the throat, but his attacker is just so goddamn tall. Eyes watering, he grabs the hand still tangled in his hair in an attempt to break one of the guy's fingers, but the both of them are shocked still when another Insurrectionist flies into the wall, crumpling down in a daze.  
  
Abruptly, the man holding him also drops to the ground when a hand grabs his head and slams it against the wall. Tucker stumbles back, catching sight of his rescuer. Standing there is Recovery, somehow managing to look really, really pissed, despite no part of his face being visible.  
  
"What. The. Fuck. Were. You. Thinking?!" Recovery punctuates each word with another incapacitated Insurrectionist, taking them each out like they're ragdolls. Tucker stands patiently next to the hotel while the Freelancer dispatches the rest of the mob. When the last man has fallen, Recovery stalks over to Tucker and starts to drag him off, then thinks better of it. Instead, he crouches and lifts Tucker up, throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes.   
  
"Are you serious? What, you think I'm dumb enough to go inside or something?" asks Tucker, trying to flail out of Recovery's grip. The arm reining him in tightens, reminding him of just how close they are right now.  
  
"I'm 100% certain you would do whatever it takes to get a story, so I'm standing by this decision. Stop wiggling; you're just going to make yourself dizzy."  
  
"Doesn't your team need you?" he tries.  
  
"They should be fine for now. Number One let Meta loose inside, and she's got C.T. covering her out here. Once you're somewhere safe, I'll join them." They march onward back toward Blood Gulch.   
  
Tucker resigns himself to staring at Recovery's ass and the pebbles bouncing on the ground, but he gets the strange sensation that someone's watching them. He lifts his torso enough to notice that there's a figure in one of the bank's second floor windows holding...a gun?  
  
Reflexively, he pushes all his body weight away from Recovery, jerking them both toward the ground, but it's too late. The gunshot rings out and they tumble to the ground. From up above comes an enraged growl followed by a scream, but it sounds lightyears away to Tucker, who scrambles to check on Recovery.  
  
The vigilante lies there groaning, which means he's at least alive, but there's an alarming amount of blood soaking through his mask. It's beginning to form a stain on the asphalt. Tucker scrabbles around in his pocket for his phone, but then remembers that it's still lying on the ground where he dropped it. Dammit. Gingerly, he pats Recovery on the shoulder, saying, "Stay with me, dude. Please don't pass out. I don't know any first aid except CPR, and even I know that's inappropriate for this situation." He struggles to keep his tone calm, but it's really difficult when he can see the dark red blotch consuming the gray of Recovery's mask.  
  
"I'm fine, it's just a tangential wound," Recovery mumbles, sitting up. "It looks worse than it is."  
  
"Right, 'cause I can really trust the expertise of a guy suffering from head trauma," Tucker barks.  
  
Recovery touches the wound tentatively, wincing when he makes contact. "The bullet only grazed me. I just have to bandage it up."  
  
"Gotta get away from the action first," Tucker reminds him. "You okay to stand?" At the Freelancer's nod, Tucker helps heft him back to his feet, though they stagger a bit before finding their footing.  
  
Slowly, they hobble to the deserted cafe in the shadows as police and emergency vehicles surround the battle that's raging on. Nobody notices or cares when they enter and collapse into the wooden chairs in the back corner, mostly hidden from sight. Tucker leaves Recovery alone to take off his mask while he ducks behind the counter to grab a stack of cloth napkins and a pitcher of water. Scrounging around a little more turns up a roll of masking tape, which he takes too. However, when he returns, the mask is very much still on.  
  
"Uh, do you need some help taking it off?" he asks, putting his scavenged supplies on the table. The other man jitters his fingers against the tabletop, thinking something over.  
  
Eventually, Recovery sighs, deeply, before asking, "There's no way you'd agree to letting me do this alone, is there?"  
  
"Hell no! I'm still not convinced you're not gonna suddenly keel over and die."  
  
"I didn't think so." He pauses one more time, watching the frenzied commotion occurring outside: police escorting cuffed Insurrectionists to their squad cars, medics rushing around and treating the injured. When he speaks again, Tucker hears a sense of resignation. "For what it's worth, I'm sorry."  
  
Carefully, Recovery removes his mask.  
  
Thinking back on it later, Tucker can't say if maybe some part of him had known all along. The pieces of the puzzle had always been there, but perhaps he'd been willfully ignorant to it. There's a certain comfort in leaving mysteries to lie, and Tucker can admit he's a fan of the easy way out. So, no, the reveal doesn't blindside him, but it still  _hurts_ , punching the air out of his lungs and causing something in his chest to catch. He feels it like a loss; like a death in the family, he supposes, or just the loss of a love that could have been.   
  
Blood is matted on the blond hair along the long shallow cut, and a thin trickle drips its way down past the temple, drawing a rusty crimson trail that stands out starkly against pale skin. Those tired gray eyes that Tucker knows so well blink back at him, awaiting his judgment. That mouth, pressed into that flat stubborn line he's seen too many times to count; that mouth, which had evidently kissed him yesterday night-  
  
It fucking figures. Of course Tucker would try to fall in love with Wash all over again. It's so absurd that the only thing preventing him from breaking down into hysterical laughter is the need to treat Wash's wound.  
  
"I'm gonna murder you," he says casually, grabbing the mask from Wash's hand and tossing it aside.  
  
"Fair enough," Wash grimaces, as Tucker pours the water over his wound, carding through the hair tacky with blood, thoroughly cleaning it away. "I can understand why you would be upset. Although, if you try to see it from my point of view-"  
  
"Oh, sorry, it's kinda hard for me to understand the perspective of a  _filthy liar_."  
  
"Technically, I never actually lied to you. Ow." With his free hand, Tucker pinches Wash's cheek vindictively.  
  
Most of the blood and minuscule debris that collected in the cut is gone. He begins gently pressing a folded napkin against the wound to staunch the rest of the bleeding. "Like withholding information is so much better."  
  
"Says the journalist who informs absolutely no one when he goes chasing after Insurrectionists."  
  
"Like you have room to talk, Mr. Secret Superhero. And at least I never made you wear a bag on your head!"  
  
Wash can't stop his smirk. "I'm still surprised you went for that."  
  
The first napkin is thrown aside and replaced with a new, clean one. "Between wearing a bag and freezing my ass off, you bet I'm gonna put it on. I should've tried harder to sneak a peek at your paranoid face, though."  
  
Clearing his throat, Wash responds, "Maybe you can grasp now why I might not have wanted you to know my identity?"  
  
"No, I think it's stupid you didn't just tell me." Tucker scowls at him, holding the napkin stable.  
  
"You already don't listen to anything I say; how well do you think you would've reacted if you knew I was tracking your movements to make sure you didn't get yourself killed?"  
  
"Pretty ironic that you're the one that got shot."  
  
"If  _someone_ hadn't been snooping around where he shouldn't have been-"  
  
"Nah, you know there's no way you could've stopped me from being there. The real problem," Tucker says, poking Wash in the chest, "is the way you carried me."  
  
Wash pushes both his hands away, and takes his wound dressing for himself, taping it down. "I was afraid you would take off!"  
  
Tucker shakes his head, and begins gathering up their garbage. "Where the hell would I have gone? Are you honestly telling me your instincts aren't sharper when you're not lugging me around like a trashbag? Shoulda just let me walk, you dumbass. Who even carries people like that. I can't believe I'm in love with you, you fucking lunatic," he grumbles, piling up all the bloody mess in his arms and bringing it over to the bin.  
  
"It seems you're destined to give me a headache no matter what I try to do, so," Wash starts, but then Tucker's words catch up to him. "Wait, what did you say?"  
  
Tucker doesn't even register his own words until Wash stares at him, frozen, and then his brain starts backpeddling so hard his eyes spin. "What? Nothing. I didn't say anything."   
  
"You're in love with me?" The way Wash is looking at him right now, with his eyes wide and disbelieving, like everything's suddenly changed somehow, is paralyzing. Tucker has to fight to avert his gaze, concentrating instead on throwing out each soiled cloth piece by piece.  
  
"Pfff, uh, no. You're obviously confused, what with the head injury," Tucker deflects, tiny tremors coursing through his fingers.  _Think_ , he says to himself,  _think, there's gotta be a way to salvage this. Play it off. You're good at that. Push it all down and lock it away. You've been doing this for years; you're not going to let this fuck-up ruin it all now._  
  
"Say it again."  
  
The scrape of Wash's chair against the tiled floor, the hammering of his own heart, the thundering tick of each second on the cafe's wall clock: it's all so loud in those few wordless seconds that it takes for Wash to approach. A touch to his shoulder, and Tucker turns to face him like he's been compelled.  
  
"Please," says Wash quietly, and Tucker has no choice but to let it out.  
  
"I'm in love with you."  
  
The hand on his shoulder clenches, and Wash's eyes are imploring as he asks, "With me? Or, or with-"  
  
" _You_ , Wash, you asshole. Three goddamn years of my life wasted on you, and the second I think that maybe I'm not a total lost cause- the second I think that maybe I can get over you, that I can move on, it happens all over again. Apparently I've got a type, and that type is  _literally just you_ ; how does that even happen?!" Once the first confession escapes, it's as if the floodgates have burst open, and every pent up grievance spills out, as Tucker paces in front of Wash, tugging at his braids in frustration. "I thought Recovery was- I thought there was a chance there, like maybe he was looking out for me 'cause he actually liked me, y'know? And then we kissed and you bailed, and of course it turns out I was just fooling myself. He's you and you're him and it was...it was never what I was dumb enough to hope for. He was just protecting me because he's you. Because that's just what you do for people. It was never anything more than that and it's never gonna be. And I'm still not over you, and now you know everything, so I should probably just go back to the bank and let someone shoot me in the eye."  
  
With that, Tucker spins around and heads for the door, fully intending to run the hell away before he has to face the consequences. Before Wash can deliver the final blow and kill that last seed of hope buried in the deepest hollow of his heart. He only makes it two steps away when he's stopped by Wash's arms trapping him in place. He's not sure if it's a hug or some kind of martial arts hold, because on the one hand, it's not particularly comforting given how hard Wash's fingers are pressing into his skin, but on the other hand, Wash has buried his face in Tucker's hair and Tucker can feel the stutter of his pulse as it transmits against his back.  
  
"You're incorrect on so many levels," Wash mutters.  
  
"Trying to teach me a valuable lesson at a completely inappropriate time? Don't let old man Sarge know, but I think I just won Wash Bingo. Let's see, yep, that's five in a row; good thing I had 'ruining my life' in the corner there, that's always a sure bet," Tucker snarks, yielding to Wash's terrible embrace. At least he can enjoy this while it lasts.  
  
Wash manages to conk Tucker on the skull by using his chin. "Listen. The reason I - Recovery, that is - left that night isn't because I don't like you. I ran because I thought you were opening your eyes. I was afraid you would see my face, and I couldn't afford to let that happen."  
  
"What, did you think I'd turn you in to the cops? I wouldn't do that to you," Tucker argues, tracing the tears in Wash's armored shirt. Luckily, none of them lead to anything worse than scratches on his skin.  
  
"I wasn't worried about that. Put yourself in my shoes for a second, alright? You're standing around waiting for your friend, who you've been in love with for approximately half of your acquaintance, when-"  
  
"Hold up, what was that?" No, seriously,  _what_?  
  
"Shush. Let me tell my story. Anyway, he says he's going to fix his hair, but for some reason his safety beacon goes off, and even though you're pretty sure he's okay, he does have a tendency to get entangled in the most ludicrous shit you can imagine, so you slap on your disguise and run back outside. You think he's going to ask you some inane questions, but no, it's worse. Because while you weren't paying attention, somehow the love of your life has managed to fall for your alter ego."  
  
_Oh_.  
  
"You agree to the kiss, because you're not a saint, okay? If this is the only way you can have him, then fine. You'll take it. And just when you're thinking this could work, as if you could magically carry on some sort of weird covert relationship built on lies, he starts to open his eyes. That's when you retreat, because you can't let him figure out who you are. Because you? You're just Wash, his annoying friend who makes bad salads and forces him to run laps, whose unrequited feelings have gone unnoticed for years. He's not kissing you. He's kissing Recovery, who is more interesting than you in every conceivable way."  
  
When Wash finishes speaking, his hold loosens enough for Tucker to turn so they're face-to-face. He inhales deeply, taking a breath to settle the exhilaration in his veins. "That's a pretty sad story. Also, there's like ten things wrong with it."  
  
"Really," Wash says flatly, hiding the first signs of a smile, but his eyes give him away.  
  
"I'm not going to get into the details, but your biggest mistake is this: yeah, your friend might have been kissing Recovery. But who he _wanted_  to be kissing - that's always been Wash." To prove his point, Tucker stretches up and pulls Wash down for their lips to meet.  
  
They don't break apart until someone clears their throat noisily in the doorway of the cafe. Wash turns to look just in time to catch the clean mask that Number One's thrown in his direction.  
  
"Time to go. The cops are running out of Insurrectionists to arrest; we're next on their list if we don't leave now," she says, leaning against the doorway, looking utterly unsurprised.  
  
"Right," Wash replies, pulling the mask on, taking care not to jostle his makeshift bandage.  
  
"C.T. and Meta are waiting with Niner on the roof of the insurance place. Meet us there once you're done saying goodbye to your boyfriend," Number One commands. She gives Tucker a nod of acknowledgement as she leaves.  
  
"Um, guess I'll see you tomorrow then?" Tucker says while they walk to the door.  
  
"Yeah. Try to stay out of trouble for the next twelve hours," Wash requests with a final clothed kiss to Tucker's cheek, and then he's swallowed up by the crowd.  
  
Even with the sound of sirens in the air and the throng of people threatening to crush him on the way back to Blood Gulch, Tucker's smiling the whole way.  
  
\--  
  
"No, for the last time, you can't come with me!" Wash yells from the bathroom of Tucker's apartment. The device on the coffee table keeps flashing red enticingly.  
  
"What's the point in you being a superhero if you can't help me get a story?" whines Tucker, texting away his frustrations in emoji form to Kai and Grif.  
  
"Oh, I don't know, maybe to help people? Look, Niner says it's out in the middle of nowhere, so it's not going to be newsworthy anyway. Just stay here. I'll be home in an hour, tops," Wash responds, putting on his gloves as he enters the living room.  
  
"What if I attach one of those sports cameras to your head? That'd be sick. We could put the footage up on the website. Or no, I could put it on C.T. That would be even better."  
  
'What, no, that's ridiculous. For multiple reasons." At Tucker's practiced kicked puppy-dog look, Wash groans, checks his watch, then admits defeat. "Fine. Just this once. But you have to stay in the car! I can't keep watch over you and deal with the Insurrectionists at the same time."  
  
Grabbing his notebook and pen, Tucker grins. "You're a smart guy. I'm sure you'll find a way."


	6. i think i just shut off my short-term memory

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here, have some patently absurd canon!AU amnesia fic while I work on coffeeshop fluff. This one's pretty long too; sorry, friends!

When you regain consciousness, it's to the sight of a young man peering down at you in concern. He openly slumps in relief when you blink at him, trying to place where you might have seen him before. Sharp dark eyebrows, high cheekbones, mouth twisted up into a scrunch of pure irritation: it all comes together in a face for which you feel an unbearable surge of fondness. Whoever he is, he's important to you.  
  
Important enough that you let him punch you in the arm while he curses you out, though it just glances off your power armor. "Thank god, you stupid dipshit. I mean, I knew you weren't dead, but I'm not Doc, okay, I don't know what the fuck to do when people collapse. Pretty sure he doesn't either; the dude thinks aloe vera to the neck cures a bullet wound - no idea how they let him become a medic, seriously. I took the helmet off," he says, mimicking the motion with his hands, " 'cause I thought maybe I'd have to do CPR, but you were breathing, so I kinda just let you sleep or whatever. Figured you could use it. Caboose says he hasn't seen you get more than four hours of sleep a day."  
  
"Well, he'd know," you say, wracking your brain for any knowledge of a Caboose, as you sit up. The name conjures up a protective instinct in you, but there's nothing more concrete than that. Maybe he's your son? Do you have kids? A family? At that thought, you steal a look at your companion, and again, another wave of intense, deep-rooted affection pulses through you. Hmmm. You might not know where you are or why you're suited up like a space marine or even your own name, but that twinge in your heart is pretty unmistakable, you think. Some things can never be forgotten.  
  
Perhaps this man is your husband?  
  
You must have been staring a bit too long, because his brows knit together and he shifts forward on his knees uneasily. "You sure you're okay? Carolina said she and Church'd be here soon; we could just wait for them."  
  
"Sure," you say automatically, but his consternation only deepens.  
  
"Really? You're not gonna make me explore the rest of the temple or benchpress a rock?" He wriggles backwards trying to put some space between the two of you. "You're not actually Wash, are you? Man, I thought we were done with all this AI possession shit!"  
  
"I'm not possessed," you protest. You know that much. AIs, however, leave a bad taste in your mouth for whatever reason. Trying not to dwell on it too much, you continue, "I just think we earned a break. We worked hard today." You spout the words out, hoping to hit some sort of mark. It doesn't  _feel_ like a lie. You'd like to think that you're the kind of guy who gives it your all. You're probably a good person who deserves some rest.  
  
"Oh my god, you just have brain damage instead. That's super," he gripes, leaning back in to check for some external sign of injury, though you must have been wearing your helmet the whole time. This close, you can see how the dust in the air catches on his eyelashes, and the small puckered scar at the base of his cheek, and the way his tongue pokes out between his teeth as he's concentrating - and you realize, that if you're  _not_ married to this guy, you're well and truly fucked, because you are so in over your head there's no resurfacing. You don't even who he is, and yet he's  _everything_.  
  
Your brain is flashing at you  _defensive mechanism, evasive maneuver, do something to hold off this assault you dumb asshole_ , but you have no understanding of yourself or the situation, so you finally blurt out the truth.  
  
"I have amnesia." Saying it out loud makes it sound absurdly impossible.  
  
But your companion doesn't seem surprised, or disbelieving. He just looks incredibly offended. "What."  
  
"I don't actually know who you are. Or who I am. I assume I must be Wash, given what you said earlier?"  
  
He shakes his head vehemently, his hair whipping back in forth in a cloud of motion. "Amnesia? Nope. You've gotta be joking."  
  
"Do I seem like the kind of person who would do that?" His face falls at that, prompting you to append, "No, seriously, I don't know. From your reaction, I'm guessing it's a no. I could change that. I know a ton of knock-knock jokes." Like, it's strange how many you know. You don't even think you like them all that much.  
  
"No. Don't do that. Just be your regular, paranoid, control freak, fun-killing self." He stands up with a groan, and you feel kind of bad for disappointing him. You get the feeling that normally you'd be taking charge of things, but hey, if that's who you usually are, maybe it's good for you to take it easy for once. Perhaps this is a chance to reinvent yourself. It can't have been fun to be a paranoid control freak. You could be new and improved, Wash 2.0.  
  
Your friend (?), however, doesn't appear very pleased with the situation. "You really can't remember anything? At all?" There's a running current of worry in his tone, and it lights a warmth in the pit of your stomach.  
  
"I know that I know you, if that makes sense. Nothing from before I woke up." You decide it's not a good idea to tell him that the floating lights of the temple refract to stars in his eyes, and that you have the inexplicable intuition that he has really nice legs. You have concluded that the two of you are not married. Honestly, with all the hanging out in alien structures and holding of loaded weapons, you're most likely just brothers-in-arms, which means that you're just nursing an embarrassingly mushy infatuation. You were, apparently, champion-grade at pining.   
  
His gaze turns accusing. "You touched the thing, didn't you," he demands, stabbing his finger toward the tablet-like mechanism in the middle of the room. You answer with a shrug, because it's very possible you did. Whatever, it's cool. Wash 2.0 doesn't linger in the past. Your friend is not appeased by your cavalier attitude. "What the hell is with you people?! How hard is it not to mess with weird alien shit? Look, you know what I learned all that time I was running around digging up artifacts with Junior? I learned that you shouldn't fucking touch stuff you don't understand! Because it's probably a desert space laser or a goddamn amnesia machine!"  
  
Despite that, he trudges over to the tablet and begins poking at it, muttering something unflattering about you as he does. You finally get up onto your feet and follow him, noticing the ease with which you move in this body, in this gear. You don't know where you are, but your senses are doing a damn good job of cataloging every salient thing about your environment. The eerie silence besides your companion's fiddling, the dryness in the back of your throat from the non-existent ventilation, the thin layer of undisturbed grime left on all the untouched surfaces: they all point to a building that's been deserted long ago. You wonder what kind of mission the two of you are on that would involve searching abandoned alien relics.   
  
"Dammit, shoulda listened to Doc Grey when she was explaining this bullshit," your friend grouches, glaring at the array of buttons. They're all covered in a language that you are completely illiterate in.  
  
"I thought you wanted to wait for our friends. Maybe they'd be better equipped to deal with this?" you suggest, leaning over his shoulder to examine the tablet.  
  
"That was before I realized you had amnesia.  _You_ of all people. Un-fucking-believable." He locates a button whose dust has been mostly wiped away, and presses it. The tablet glows a little, but nothing else happens, and he pushes them at random after that. "We both know somehow this is going to end up being my fault, so I'm gonna fix it before I have to put up with their bitching in stereo. God, and if they snitch to Kimball? She's like the only person who still barely respects me; not gonna let Church fuck that up for me too."  
  
"I respect you," you tell him with confidence. He shoots a look at you so skeptical it starts to make you feel kind of flustered, but then it breaks into a grin, causing one cheek to dimple, and the stress lines in his forehead to ease. You become more flustered.  
  
"It's gonna be hysterical when you get your memory back. I'm never going to let you live this down," he snickers, turning back to the tablet and punching another button. At this, the mechanism hums gently, and a hologram projects upward, covered in more indecipherable symbols. You're glad it's not reflective because you don't need the confirmation that you've become flushed at the sound of his laugh.   
  
"You seem perfectly competent," you counter. "Except for the messing around with technology that we don't understand, but I obviously have no room to pass judgment over that."  
  
"Damn right you don't. And you're just being nice to me 'cause you don't know who the hell I am. The minute we get back to Armonia, it's gonna be 'Captain Tucker, please stop hitting on everyone who enters the armory,' " he mimics, stiffening his face into a controlled sternness and lowering his pitch. " 'Tucker, imitating a beached whale doesn't count as a sit-up. Tucker, put on your fucking underwear before you enter a public facility.' "  
  
You're saved from the awkwardness of your line of sight dropping down to his pelvis when he swipes his hand through the hologram and it expands, turning to project toward him instead. His eyes widen and you both hurriedly smash another couple of buttons to turn the hologram off, but the beam of light directs itself right at his eyes and flashes once, fever bright and dazzling. You're not in its exact range, so once you blink the after-images away you're fine. Your friend, not so much. When the light shuts off, he promptly flops over, saved only by your reflexes. You shake him twice to no reaction, before leaning in to discover that he's breathing deeply. Definitely asleep.  
  
Well then. Fuck.  
  
The tablet has gone dormant yet again, but you decide it's best to get out of this room before the two you get any other smart ideas. It doesn't seem like either of you are exceptional decision makers. You position him on your back and grab your helmets with the hand that's not holding him up, backtracking out the way your footprints lead. Outside the room is a long spiraling stair that winds down a story or so; you descend to the dais below. At the ground level, the building opens up at one end so you exit, relishing in the breeze that embraces you once you're outside. Up on the external landing, you can see the craggy hills that stretch off into the distance, lightly covered in fog.  
  
Gently, you lower him to the floor, resting his head in your lap. It feels like you're overstepping a line, considering you only learned his name two minutes ago, but you have ostensibly seen him naked, so who knows where your boundaries begin. While you wait for him to wake, you close your eyes and try to picture your home.  
  
Nothing materializes.   
  
You think of parents, of siblings, schools and basic training and lost friends and happiness and space and betrayal.  
  
Nothing. You're a blank slate.  
  
Opening your eyes, you search the features of the man in your lap for any explanation, but there's only that hitch in your breath and sluggish ethereal haze that clouds your vision because you are a hopeless dork. So you unclasp the glove from your right hand, and map the scars there instead.   
  
You can count at least nine. Some fading to time, others long and spidering down past your wrist. Evidence of fractures and shattered bones, knit back together around pins and screws. It's a good bet that the rest of your body is in similar shape. As you trace the thin pink line curled around your ring finger, you start to believe that  you were right about this being a second chance.  
  
The person you were, the person Wash used to be, was the kind who collected injuries by the dozen as a matter of course and killed other people's fun and loved the same way he walked: with purpose, never faltering, but so silently as to never be heard. And what did he have to show for it?  
  
Nothing, as far as you know.  
  
You're not sure if you're brave by nature, but if this is your new beginning, then you might as well take advantage of it.  
  
At the corner of your companion's mouth a trickle of drool is collecting, so you swipe it away with your thumb and then jostle his shoulder. When he comes to he stares at you for a beat, disoriented, but he suddenly jerks up in panic, almost crashing your foreheads together. For a long stretch he watches you, pupils blown and his heart beating like that of a trapped rabbit's. Reaching out, he makes as if to touch your face, but draws his hand back when he sees the armored glove around it.  
  
"You're not dead," he says, his voice filled with a soft wonder, and then his expression opens up into something so genuinely happy that for second you feel displaced, like you're having an out of body experience, watching him smile at someone else like that.  
  
"I'm not," you agree mildly, belying the stuttering quickstep in your pulse. Perhaps his amnesia isn't as severe as yours?  
  
"Yeah," he nods back, but then he pauses, peering at you sideways. "Wait. Who are you again?" Or not.  
  
"I'm Wash," and it doesn't feel wrong to call yourself by that name, just unfamiliar. Like breaking in a new pair of shoes.  
  
"Cool, cool. Right," he says, and you can see the gears turning in his head as he tries to remember you, and then himself, and yes, here it comes, the inset of shock as he realizes he hasn't the faintest idea who he is.  
  
"You're Tucker," you supply helpfully. It's somewhat bizarre knowing that in the span of ten minutes you've somehow become the more knowledgeable of the two of you, even though you're still completely in the dark.  
  
"Tucker? Okay, shit, I guess that sounds about right." he mumbles, staring gravely down at himself, fiddling with his chestplate. "Um. I don't mean to sound like an idiot, but what are we doing here?"  
  
You reach over and help him loosen a fitting so the armor doesn't sit too tight. "We're studying alien structures on this planet."  
  
"Oh. Why?" He taps your arm and you release him so he can twist his torso around, testing the mobility of the suit. He's still seated intimately close to you, inches away from your side, but he gives no indication that it makes him uncomfortable.  
  
You grin ruefully at him, ducking your head down sheepishly. "I can only hypothesize at best. You're not the only one with a few gaps in his memory."  
  
Tucker goggles back at you. He tries to express something with his hands, but gives up, asking, "Seriously? You too?"  
  
"Me first, actually. I guess you're not big on learning by example," you needle him. He scoffs and elbows you lightly in the gut.  
  
"That just means you fucked up first, dude." He leans back on his hands, tilting his head back on his shoulder to get a good view of you. He looks natural like this, casual and carefree; that slightly frazzled temper he'd had earlier was because he had been concerned about you. "So, what, are we friends?"  
  
Friends. You'd like to think so. "Well, we work together, in any case. And I've seen you naked," you add inexplicably, because your TMI filters have gone a little haywire.  
  
Tucker's eyebrows jump up. " _Those_ kind of friends, huh?" he asks, putting air-quotes around his words. He gives you a slow once-over, frowning thoughtfully. You hate that you can feel a blush at the tip of your ears.  
  
"Unlikely. It's something you mentioned offhand before you decided against your own better judgment to touch the amnesia machine. Good call on that, by the way."  
  
"I'm an impressionable guy. Saw how well it turned out for you and I couldn't wait to try it for myself," he says, sarcasm heavy in his tone.   
  
"I think it's safe to say we both suck, and that was before the memory wipe. We're nigh disastrous now," you admit.  
  
"I'll show you how well I can suck," Tucker quips, thoughtlessly, before backtracking with a splutter. "Wait, no, I did it wrong, fuck."  
  
It's utterly juvenile, but you laugh anyway. "That's what you're leading with? Kind of weak."  
  
His figurative feathers plump up, ruffled in indignation. "Hey, man, I've got plenty of material! Maybe I don't think you're worth my A game." He waves a hand airily toward you, gesturing at it all in disdain. "You're like pretty hot, but not pull out all the stops hot, you get me?"  
  
You shake your head disapprovingly. "That's hurtful, Tucker. Also, meaningless. Seeing as I am literally the only person you know, I am, by default, the most attractive person you know." To seal the deal, you smile at him the way he ought to be smiled at, letting just a fraction of the tenderness you feel to translate through, and even that feels like you're pouring your heart out through your ribcage. Tucker is caught in it, brown eyes dazed and the slightest hint of red coloring his cheeks, until he consciously blinks it away, turning his head aside so he doesn't face you straight on.  
  
He flounders a bit after that, puffing his cheeks full of air and releasing it with a pop as he thinks. "Alright, fine." He takes another moment to choose his line. When he looks at you, his eyes are half-lidded, and he's wearing a practiced smirk, toeing the line between charming and sleazy. "Hey, babe, are you a sergeant, 'cause you've got-"  
  
"No. I don't know what my rank is, but I get the feeling that I'm not," you interrupt, staring at him blandly. He smacks you in the arm with the back of his hand, scowling.  
  
"Come on, don't pull that shit while I'm hitting on you!" Your poker face breaks and you start laughing at him again, causing him to pummel your stomach ineffectively while you rock backwards.  
  
"Sorry, sorry, try it again," you tell him, patting him on the back. He crinkles his nose in annoyance and hits you one final time.  
  
"You're lucky I like you, asshole. Let me do it right this time. Baby, you ever hear 'bout the Galactic Positioning System? Because you're gonna be-"  
  
"Tucker, when you said 'Washington like fucking died or something,' I knew you were exaggerating, but I did expect him to be unconscious, at the very least," says a wry voice from the foot of the stairs. You both startle at the sound, turning to look at the newcomer, a soldier in cyan armor with a rifle in her hands. Hopping out of her vehicle, she starts striding up the stairs, her footsteps crisp and steady.   
  
Tucker looks wildly at you for an explanation, scooching closer in trepidation. "Some help here?" he hisses. "Who the hell is that?"  
  
"You called her Carolina when you were talking to me earlier," you respond quietly, but your attention is on her. That voice stirs some sense of fealty in you, mixed with a hint of fear. Fear of her, fear for her. You think the word  _sister_ to yourself, then feel immediately embarrassed afterward.  
  
She stops a few feet short of you, looking over you both quizzically. "Good, you look alright. But why did you remove your helmets?"  
  
Despite being wary of her, Tucker seems to have zero misgivings about making a pass. "You know, so we could make out and stuff, but we were waiting for y-ow, hey!" You silence him by kicking him in the back.   
  
"For CPR. Not that it was necessary. We were just sleeping. But not at the same time; I did first, obviously, since he called you, as you know..." Despite her helmet, Carolina manages to look completely dubious of your rambling. You find yourself unable to conjure up a preface to your explanation that makes a lick of sense, so you just go for it. You'll have to talk about it eventually. "So, it might be a good time to mention that we have amnesia?" Tucker nods in support, head bobbing up and down like a marionette's.  
  
Several seconds pass in silence.   
  
Carolina puts her hand up in a 'wait' gesture, looks up to the sky for strength, and sighs. "...the worst part is, I don't even think you're lying to me. We'd better go get you two checked out." And with that, she throws down a grenade.  
  
\--  
  
"Ughhh, it still hurts," Tucker groans, clutching at his forehead. "Stupid future cube."  
  
"Right? I told you it's not just me," Simmons replies, shoving Grif away from his share of the rations with a metallic hand.   
  
"Yeah, but it sure beats walking anywhere," Grif says through his mouthful of mush.  
  
Caboose drops his spoon suddenly, his eyes wide. "Oh! That's right, I didn't walk Freckles yet today. I will go do that now," he announces to the table, before wandering away, chattering at his gun.  
  
You watch the scene in bemusement, because it  _feels_ familiar, down to that confusing mix of fond and really fucking exasperated that you're experiencing, and yet, you can't say that you _know_ any of these people. Tucker hadn't recognized them either, but he fell right back into their extravagant squabbling like he belonged there, which only made sense. Even so, once in a while, they'll reference something neither of you can recall, and the two of you make puzzled eye-contact across the crowd, as if to confirm you're both as lost as the other.  
  
Like now. His eyes snap to yours while Colonel Sarge is yelling something about wild turkeys and insubordination, and he pulls a face at the meatloaf-esque lump on his tray. You beckon with your left hand and he slides it across to you, barely getting past Lieutenant Smith's sweeping rag mopping up a juice spill. Carefully, you excise the particularly green bits from his loaf and pile them up next to your canned peaches before sliding the tray back. Squinting down the table, making sure to factor in Donut's proclivity for large grandiose arm movements, you load up your spork with a green meat clump and fling it toward Grif's plate.   
  
It lands squarely in the melting frosting of his sliver of cake. Tucker surreptitiously fistpumps under the table when Grif crams the whole slice of cake down his throat, too busy mouthing off at Sarge to notice the new garnish on his dessert. You take aim for his soup next, but Tucker nudges your shin with his foot and jerks his head toward Simmons instead. With a flick, you land a piece in the pile of wilting spring mix on his plate, where it camouflages perfectly. Simmons stabs his spork into his salad blindly, preoccupied with fending off his lieutenant's offers to train with him, and the two of you watch, transfixed, to see if he eats it.  
  
You're so engaged in your silly game that you almost don't notice Lieutenant Jensen coming up behind you. It's a good thing you do, because she trips over her own foot and heads toward a faceplant onto the bench, before you intercept and steady her. She salutes nervously, her wavy hair pulled back tight and braces gleaming under the mess hall lights.  
  
"Agent Washington, sir! Um, Kimball would like you and Captain Tucker to report to her in the war room when you're done eating," she tells you, lisp heavy from anxiety. There's a spot of grease on her armor, and you're struck again by how young all these soldiers are, to have spent their whole lives hiding in caverns and running practice raids and fixing military vehicles, just to die for an artificial cause. From what you've gathered about your past, maybe it's something you understand better than you think.  
  
"Thank you, lieutenant. We'll go see her now. We were finished here anyway," you respond as kindly as you can. She falls back at ease, and scurries away to sit with her friends. Tucker shovels a last bite of peaches into his mouth before coming around to join you. You fall into step together, but his legs are a little shorter than yours, so he has to hustle to keep up with your long stride. You intentionally quicken your pace just to mess with him and he jogs after you, cursing through his peaches. When you've hit the point that you're basically power walking away, you can hear the running start that prepares you for the sudden weight of someone else hanging off your back. With a grunt, you shift to adjust Tucker so that he's no longer bending your neck forward at a painful angle. Your arms hooked securely under his legs, you continue onward to the war room, ignoring the gaping faces of the soldiers watching you piggyback their captain.  
  
"I could just drop you, and you wouldn't be able to do anything about it," you remind him as he acts out some sort of goofy scene up there.  
  
"Aw, don't be a dick. I deserve this! I'm always the one doing the hard work. I never get to ride."  
  
You stop in your tracks, several feet from your destination. "Wait, did you remember something?" Could the effects of the machine be wearing off?  
  
"Not really; it's just that feeling, you know?" Yeah, you do know. That feeling of something you're certain about yourself, without any basis in evidence or remembered experience.  
  
The war room is in the adjacent building, so the walk is quick. Waiting inside are your superiors, making the inevitable descent into infighting. You let Tucker slide off your back before you awkwardly enter into the middle of what's about to become a shouting match.  
  
"I understand that, General Doyle, but I can't afford to put a man out on the field who can't even remember what planet we're on!" Kimball looks apologetically toward you and Tucker, but her face is set. Tucker shrugs back, impervious to any unintended offense.  
  
"Miss Kimball, you forget that-" Doyle begins, but Carolina places a hand on his shoulder and he falls silent.  
  
"Why don't we continue this conversation after Doctor Grey tells us what's she's found out," she says, herding Doyle aside. Kimball nods, exhaustion visible in her posture, and Carolina goes to fetch the doctor from the other room.  
  
Doc Grey bustles in with a electronic data pad at hand, Epsilon floating at her side, biting at her lip as she continues to read in silence for another few seconds. When she finishes she looks up and beams at all of you; the response is nowhere near as enthusiastic. You try not to stare at Epsilon; the large range of emotions he brings up in you - anger, regret, loss, conciliation - are stressful to think about.  
  
"So!" she chirps. "Although both Agent Washington and Captain Tucker are suffering from memory loss, nothing else seems to be out of the ordinary. Our tests earlier suggest that Washington has retained most of his muscle memory, so whatever artifact they activated very specifically targeted their declarative memory, leaving everything else intact. Which is fascinating! It leads us to wonder whether the mechanism was designed with this purpose in mind, because why-"  
  
"That's good to hear, Doc," Carolina interrupts loudly, trying to stop the font of theorizing bursting forth from Grey. She looks like she's developing a headache from having to wrangle everyone else in the room. "So, do you have a remedy?"  
  
"Nope!" Grey says sunnily.  
  
"Yeah, what she said," Epsilon agrees.  
  
Kimball, weariness lining her body through and through, asks what they're all thinking. "...so they're stuck like this then? We've lost two of the most valuable assets in our battle just like that?"   
  
"No, there's a whole bunch of shit we could try, but since the scans didn't show any physical damage to the brain, we figured it's probably not the best idea to cut them open and fuck around in there yet," Epsilon explains.  
  
"This isn't as simple as grafting on a cybernetic leg! Epsilon and I think that right now the best course of action would be for us to re-examine the tablet that caused all the trouble in the first place! My Sangheili might not be quite up to par, but I think there's a good chance I can decipher enough to hopefully reverse the process," Doctor Grey says, looking far too excited for your comfort.  
  
The tension in Kimball's body eases up minutely, and she smiles gratefully at Grey. "That sounds like a good plan. Then, tomorrow morning, why don't we send a small team back to the temple to sort this out? I know this must be difficult for you two," she says turning to you, "but please try to bear with it. We really need both of you back." Her eyes, under other circumstances, would be kind, but war has taken its toll, and her desperation shines through.  
  
"Of course," you respond obligingly, and Tucker does the same.  
  
But somewhere, in the dark traitorous spaces of your mind, you hope Agent Washington doesn't come back. You don't know if you want to remember being him.  
  
  
  
That night, after you bid goodnight to Caboose, who's being shepherded to the bathroom with a toothbrush in hand by Carolina and Epsilon, you sit in your quarters blankly, looking over your personal effects. There's not a lot that reveals much about yourself. The clothes are nondescript and plain, there's no photographs or mementos, and almost everything else is equipment and weapons. Your sheets are neatly made, so you lie down on top of them; Armonia is still warm even at this time.  
  
You blink at the ceiling for a while, thinking over the events of the day, before deciding it's best to go to sleep, to be well rested for tomorrow, when your old life restarts again. Perhaps forty minutes or so later, a knock at your door awakens you instantly, and you sit up in confusion. Hopping off your bed, you pad over and slide open your door.  
  
Standing in the hallway in a worn t-shirt and boxers is Tucker, combing his fingers through his hair nervously. "Uh. Hey!" he says, suddenly at a loss for words.  
  
You think you should ask him what he needs but you're distracted by the design on his shirt. "What...is that? Is it a cow?" you ask, poking the four-legged shape. It seems to have been painted on by hand, likely by a child.  
  
"Dude, I have no idea. I just put on the first clean thing I found," he says, but he looks to have some vague emotional attachment to it. "Anyway, can I come in? Can't sleep. The beds here suck."  
  
"And you thought, what, that my bed would be softer?" you tease, but you let him in, closing the door behind you.  
  
Tucker glances around your room, and when he turns back to you, he looks uncertain. "No, it's, y'know. Too new? And you're, well, you get it, right?" You do. You're the only other person who understands what it's like.  
  
"Yeah," is all you say, sitting back on your bed. He sits down beside you and the two of you rest in silence for a minute until he frowns, shifting around.  
  
"Your bed is even worse than mine! How the hell are you supposed to sleep on this?" He finds a protruding spring and pushes it down with his thumb, but it bounces back.  
  
"It wasn't that bad. I was getting some decent shuteye until you came along," you tell him, but it's not really an accusation.   
  
"I can't figure out how; were you just sleeping on top of the sheets like a weirdo?" He looks to your desk, sparse and pristine, and then back at the bed. "Nevermind, I think I understand."  
  
You push him off the mattress with you and untuck your sheets, rumpling them up, then bow grandly, presenting your newly configured bed. "There, is your majesty satisfied? Get in there and quit whining," you order, shoving him back on. He grins at you and rolls over to the wall side, leaving you room to crawl in. You do so, and then you're lying there, perilously close to the person who makes your heart do cartwheels and your self-restraint grow thin.  
  
He notices your proximity too, because he starts fidgeting, looking anywhere but directly at you. "So, I'm not trying to make it awkward, but this is pretty cozy for two guys who barely know each other, isn't it?"  
  
"It is," you agree, and because you have impeccable timing, "So, do you come here often?"  
  
Tucker chokes on air, slapping your hands away when you make an effort to pat him on the back. With a gasp, he spits out, "Are you kidding me? You tell me I have no game and  _that's_ what you go with?"  
  
"I've been told it's a classic."  
  
He sighs, so put upon by your smooth moves. "All day people have been coming up to me, asking how the hell I got you to lighten up, and I have to ask - how did you manage to trick everybody into thinking you're some sort of cool badass soldier guy? Anyone with a brain can see you're the lamest person on this planet."  
  
"I don't know either," you confess. "Maybe it's my resting face. It looks kind of mean." You spent ten minutes examining yourself in the mirror earlier on in the day, trying to get a feel for who you are and how other people see you.  
  
"Yeah, it's not the best. Don't worry, I like it anyway," he tells you benevolently. His willpower is beginning to fade and you see him relax into the pillow, eyelids drooping.  
  
"That's very generous of you," you whisper back. "Feel free to lavish me with more exorbitant praise when you wake up."  
  
You get no response; he's already asleep. You close your eyes and follow suit.  
  
\--  
  
When you open your eyes in the morning, all you can think about is how there's another body on yours, and it's thoroughly trapping you in place. Looking down, you see Tucker's hair sticking up from where he's snoring on your stomach, one of his arms buried under you, the other slung over your leg. Your wall clock tells you there's about an hour before you have to meet the team to return to the temple, so you should get moving.  
  
Propping yourself up with one hand, you peel Tucker's arm off you and slide off your bed without disturbing him. Then you think better about it, and realize he's probably not going to get up on his own, so you shake him until his eyes peek open.  
  
"Wash?" he says into the sheets, completely out of it. "Why're you up so early. Come back to bed," he mumbles, and those are words that your poor heart cannot handle right now, so you fling the sheets off and watch him shiver pathetically.  
  
"Time to get up. You've gotta go back to your room and get ready," you remind him, jabbing him in the side repeatedly as he squirms.  
  
"Ugh, I don't wanna," he complains, rubbing the sleep from his eyes.  
  
"I know," you say, your agreement tacit. Tucker stops wiggling to look at you, and he sees the weakness you couldn't keep hidden deep enough.  
  
"Can't we stay like this? It's not so bad, is it?" he says quietly.   
  
"No. It's not so bad at all." You stand in your room, the early touch of sun lighting upon Tucker lying in your bed, and you think you could be happy like this. Your instincts, your reflexes, they're still somewhere in your brain. You could relearn how to be a soldier, without all the baggage. This could be your life.  
  
But this is about more than what you want. This is about what Chorus needs. About what your friends need, and you want so badly to be selfish, just this once, but who's to say you haven't spent your whole life being selfish?  
  
So you pull him up, press the wistfulness out of your tone, and tell him, "But you know we have to." He climbs down next to you, stretching the kinks out of his back, and you walk him to the door. It slides open and he turns to walk out backwards.  
  
"See you at the car, then. Thanks for, um, letting me stay," Tucker says, tugging his t-shirt down, pretending to adjust it to give his hands something to do. You watch his fingers curl around the fabric, and the way his eyes hold yours like you're drawn together magnetically, and you decide, fuck it. If nothing else, you're letting yourself have this.  
  
"Don't mention it," you reply, reaching out to tug him forward by his shirt. His eyes widen when you lean in, but he doesn't retreat, so you leave a soft kiss on his lips. It isn't anything improprietous, just enough to make your intentions known. You release him right afterward, stepping away to give him space, acting like your heart isn't on the line.  
  
Tucker presses his fingertips to his mouth, staring at you for what feels like a year, and just when you feel like you should close the door on him and go hide under your desk, he starts smirking. "Even with the morning breath, you went for it. Pretty ballsy."  
  
You shrug like you're totally at ease, even though you know you're turning red. "I figured I better make my feelings clear before I have an excuse to chicken out."  
  
"Could've waited 'til after we brushed our teeth, dude," he laughs. "Warn me next time, okay?"  
  
"Next time?" you parrot, trying not to sound as hopeful as you feel. Play it cool, goddammit.   
  
"Next time," he confirms with a smile, moonwalking back toward his room. "Better go change out of your jammies; don't want to ruin that scary secret agent image of yours, do you?" You hike your pants up so the waistband lies way too high and your ankles are exposed and flash him a thumbs up. He scrambles to get his door open before he wakes up the whole hallway with his laughter, and you head back into your own room, smiling stupidly to yourself.  
  
  
  
After you're prepared for the mission and you've eaten an apple from the mess hall, you head outside to join the rest of the team. Doc Grey is already there, chatting with Sarge about robots. You watch them, amused at how animated they both seem over the subject. Soon after you arrive, Carolina and Tucker escort Caboose out, rolling their eyes at each other over something.  
  
"But, like, he has to shut up sometime, right? He can't always be on," Tucker asks, expression dubious.  
  
"Want to take him and find out?" Carolina asks flatly.  
  
Epsilon materializes at her shoulder, flickering in annoyance. "Um, hey assholes, ever think that I might not want to take a trip to Tucker's filth infested storage again?"  
  
"Whoa, hey now, what filth? Nobody informed me there was filth," Tucker perks up, but Doctor Grey summons them over in excitement before he can delve further.  
  
"Are we all ready to go?!" she squeals as they approach the car. Caboose hops in the back automatically, singing some sort of makeshift song he just invented.  
  
"Yep, let's get these boxes in," Carolina responds, walking over to lift up one of Doctor Grey's equipment crates.  
  
"Now, I'm no expert on things of the medical variety, but before we all haul off to examine the alien doodads again, I wanna ask if anyone's tried the obvious," Sarge pipes up from besides the stack of boxes.  
  
"What's the obvious?" Epsilon asks, the caution evident in his voice.  
  
"Percussive first aid, of course!" and before anyone can protest, Sarge gives Tucker a hearty whack across the head with the butt of his shotgun. You all react a second too late, and Tucker falls to the ground, bouncing up almost immediately, yanking off his helmet to rub at the bruised spot on his head.  
  
"What the fuck, Sarge? The last time you did that all I got was a concussion and the ability to speak even  _less_ Spanish- wait, holy fucking shit, it actually worked. Oh my god, I remember all of you goddamn idiots," he garbles out, indignant rage turning into bewilderment. Caboose lets out a cheer, shooting confetti into the air. You and Doc Grey look at one another in bafflement. How could the solution be so illogically simple?  
  
"Huh. Yeah, I guess that  _was_ the obvious. Nice work, Sarge," Epsilon says approvingly. Tucker scowls, and Doctor Grey sighs in disappointment.  
  
"I suppose we have no urgent reason to return to the temple then, do we?" she asks, waving her notes around.  
  
"Well, we don't know if Sarge's method will work on Washington," Epsilon tells her. "Wash's brain is a little more...complicated than Tucker's." He sounds like he's speaking from experience, and you feel slightly rattled that he knows this. You look at Tucker, who staggers back, a flush spreading through his cheeks, and he waves at you stiffly. That hurts, but you have bigger problems to deal with, like Sarge advancing on you with his weapon.  
  
"Won't know until we try!" he says enthusiastically, lifting his shotgun, but Carolina puts a pause on any further action, walking up to you.  
  
"Don't spring it on him without warning. The result won't be pretty for either of you," she tells Sarge. "Wash. Are you ready for this?" she asks. You can hear the concern underlying it, the unspoken,  _are you ready to live with everything we know_?  
  
You don't know if you'll ever be ready, but these people need you to be at your best, and if that means becoming who you were before, then you'll do it.  
  
Flipping your visor up, you summon Sarge over. "Yes. I'm ready. Let's do it, Sarge."  
  
You close your eyes and wait for the hit to come.  
  
Right after the impact, you think to yourself,  _how typical for them to_ _give me a migraine the second I remember them_.   
  
The first thing that returns to you is the image of blood soaking through aqua armor, the crimson spot expanding by the second from the gaping wound at its center. It's accompanied by Doctor Grey's voice talking Tucker through his treatment, her pitch rising and falling in melodic waves. It makes you think of Four Seven Niner, her steady cadence and dry tone never wavering as she reported back, even when the joy left her once her wings were clipped. You think about how she was born to traverse the stars, unlike South, who ran and leapt and darted across surfaces like electricity, coursing from conduit to conduit, always discharging back to earth.  
  
Until you killed her.  
  
Like you tried to kill Donut.  
  
Because that's what you do, isn't it? This is who Agent Washington is. You carry yourself like someone who's been burned too many times before, whose trust is frayed and fragile, held together by threads, but who is it that's been leaving a trail of bodies in his wake?  
  
Death realized long ago it couldn't have you, because at the end of the day, despite what it throws at you, the universe always falls in your favor. So instead it follows in your footsteps and claims those around you: friends and enemies alike.  
  
South, Alpha, Maine. Connie, York, North. If you'd had your way, Lopez and Donut as well.  
  
You look at Tucker, who is watching you anxiously next to Carolina, as they wait for any sign of recognition. You think about his blood on Felix's knife, about Carolina's scream when she dove in to protect Caboose, about that apparent suicide mission your friends undertook in trying to rescue you from Doyle's army.  
  
How long do you have before you lose them too?  
  
Something must flicker in your eyes, because they start to smile at you, but you pull away, shaking your head. "I think I should...I need- I need to go," you explain poorly, and you take off for your quarters, blocking out their shouts as they call after you.  
  
\--  
  
Maine hated driving with you, always pushing you to the passenger's seat whenever you offered to drive. So what if you were a little unlucky with cars? It still beat Wyoming's complete inability to win a single hand of poker.  
  
Connie liked to drink orange juice right after brushing her teeth, which was disgusting. She used to say that the taste in her mouth woke her up, got her prepped for the day. Whenever York tried to kick his smoking habit he would chew this spicy blue bubblegum that he could only buy on this one tiny planet in the middle of some no name backwater sector. So he'd buy ten bulk boxes at a time and keep them in a drawer next to his socks.  
  
North was horrible at crosswords. He'd stolen a book of them off a dead guard once and tried to complete puzzles whenever he had downtime. In the end, he always wound up writing down whatever stupid suggestions you and South gave him. Florida liked to listen to alien music when he cooked. Everyone avoided the kitchen when he set up in there, too unsettled by the strange inhuman noises to consider trying to snipe a bite of whatever it was he was making that smelled so delicious.  
  
How could you have forgotten all of these things?  
  
How could you have forgotten every little shattered piece of memory Epsilon left behind when you ruined each other?  
  
Even now, you can't erase Allison's smile, or York's eyes, both of them empty this time. Even now, the chill of snow on your skin as you change into a dead man's armor, the recoil you barely felt when you fired at your friends, the betrayal in Simmons' voice when you turned your gun on him: these things will never leave you.  
  
You haven't been a good person in a long, long time. But at least you  _knew_ that. At least your memory was long and infallible enough that even if no one else punished you for your crimes, you could hold yourself accountable. Until yesterday. You had been right not to want your identity back. Somewhere inside of you, you'd known that you wouldn't like what you found. And the fact that you had gotten that reprieve from your sins at all - that's what makes you feel guiltiest. And now you're back, and you have to wonder if the people of Chorus really are better off for it.  
  
When have you ever done anything but destroy everything in your path?  
  
Someone starts knocking at your door, erratic and insistent. When you don't make any effort to let them in after several seconds, they yell through the wall instead.  
  
"Wash, open up. I know you're in there moping. At least let me mope with you," Tucker calls, still knocking.  
  
You drag yourself off your chair and to the door, bracing yourself for whatever conversation you're about to have. To your surprise, when the door slides open, Tucker's in his t-shirt in boxers again.  
  
"Kimball said we could have the morning off, to readjust before training and shit," he explains. "Also, I'm an idiot. This," he gestures at the animal on his shirt, "is obviously a giraffe. Junior made it for me. It's literally the best shirt I own; I checked and everything." He sounds so proud you almost want to smile, and then you remember you were having a great pity party until he interrupted it. This seems to be a pattern between you two.  
  
"What do you need, Tucker?" you ask, still blocking the doorway, but he ducks under your arm and barges in.  
  
"Is this how you treat everyone you kiss?" he asks, throwing himself onto your bed. So those boundaries are permanently eroded, you note. Then you stop and think about his question and start your mental gymnastics to get out of that one. Good job royally screwing yourself over, Wash. It took you less than 24 hours to undo a year of hard work. Crash and burn.  
  
"That. Um." No easy way out yet. You need more time to think.  
  
The universe doesn't like you  _that_ much. Tucker sits up, tsking at you, swooping his arms around for emphasis. "Nope, you're not gonna escape from this. Don't you dare tell me it was a mistake, 'cause I swear I'll kick your ass. Even if you didn't mean it, we should-"  
  
"I meant it," you blurt because it seems this ship can crash and burn even louder and brighter than it already has.   
  
Tucker pauses with his arms in the air, and then settles down, looking pleased. "Oh. Well, good. I meant it too." But then he frowns, turning to you in concern. "Do you, uh. Do you wanna talk about the other stuff?"  
  
You would very much like to never talk about the other stuff. You would probably avoid it forever if you could, but you know what that does to people. Fear and anger rot into something darker, something more deadly, if left alone. You've let it happen before, and you also know how it feels to have left things unsaid.  
  
After removing your helmet and placing it on your desk, you sit on the bed with him. It groans under the weight of your armor. You glare at Tucker when he opens his mouth to make a comment, and he snaps it shut, recognizing that it's not the best time. It takes another breath or two before you can figure out what you want to say.   
  
You fix your eyesight on a point on the wall and begin talking. "I didn't understand how much I'd forgotten until it all came back. Project Freelancer, Epsilon, Alpha, the Meta. Everything. And it just...I wasn't as prepared as I thought, to relearn who I was. To deal with the consequences of what I've done."  
  
"I know you've seen a lot of crazy, messed up shit, and you did your fair share too, but. You're not that guy anymore," Tucker says steadily. Like he believes what he's saying.  
  
"Maybe. But even if that's true, it doesn't mean I'm not dangerous. Sooner or later, the people around me die, whether I want them to or not. And I'd really rather that not happen to you." This is as much as you can divulge without thinking too much. Any more and you begin to remember that splotch of red on teal, Epsilon's echo in your mind, South's defiant glower as you put your gun to her head, and you can't relive that all again so soon.  
  
"C'mon, it's not like you're cursed. We'll be fine."  
  
"I wouldn't be so sure about that. In fact, your chances might be better if I weren't around," you mutter darkly.  
  
Tucker seems taken aback by that, but then he shakes his head, leering at you. "I'm a lover, not a dier," he declares.  
  
"That...doesn't even mean anything," you respond, nonplussed.  
  
"What I'm saying is, if Caboose hasn't shot me yet, I think I'm set for a while, okay? Anyway, do you really think Carolina's gonna let any of us die on her watch? She'd resurrect me just so she could punch the stupid out of my body herself." He says it flippantly, like it's the only reasonable outcome.  
  
It does sound accurate.  
  
But he can tell you're not convinced, because he changes tack, turning serious. "Hey, you know when you woke me up after the mind wipe yesterday?" At your nod, he continues, "The first thing I thought of when I saw you was 'I'm so fucking glad he's still alive' - and that's crazy, right? I didn't know who the hell you were, I mean, I didn't even know who  _I_  was, but I saw your dumb face and it's the only thing I could think about. And I was scared, okay? Like maybe it was a dream, and you weren't really there. That you actually were dead.  
  
"And the thing is, even when I didn't know anything else, I still remembered that I should be afraid for you. Whoever you were, one day you would die for me." Tucker looks at you, and you see the same fear in his eyes that you heard when the cave came crumbling down around you. When he speaks again, you hear the steel in his voice that became tempered on Chorus. "You spend all this time worrying about us, Wash, that you somehow fucking forget that you've come closer to dying more times than any of us ever have. One day, that luck's finally gonna run out. Yeah, I know we're a huge group of fuck-ups, but we know that you've got our backs, and you gotta trust that we can hold our own. You can't keep throwing yourself in the line of fire. I can't...I can't lose you, okay? You have to trust that we can win without you tossing your life away." The open honesty you see on his face hurts, because this is exactly what you didn't need. You didn't want the reminder that you could matter to somebody. Especially to someone who matters so much to you.  
  
And maybe you're both naive, because it's laughable to think that either of you will make it out alive. Even if not here on Chorus, or at the hands of Charon, one way or another, someone's going to kill you both. But when you see how far he and his friends have come since you first encountered them all those years ago, you can believe for just a moment that he could be right. That there's a happy ending, even for people like you.  
  
It's not like you're asking for the white picket fence experience. You just want this band of oddballs that you accidentally began caring too much about to finally find their way home. You want the people of Chorus to find their peace. You want Carolina and Epsilon to reach a point of equilibrium where their past doesn't continue to haunt their future.  
  
And maybe you'd like to be around to see these things happen.  
  
"I won't die," you promise.   
  
"Me neither," Tucker swears, holding his hand out. "Shake and make it official." You deliberate on it a tad too long and he grabs your gloved hand with a huff, forcing you to shake. You leave your arm limp and uncooperative. "How are you such a dick even when we're having these fucking soul-baring conversations? Were you born this way, or did they teach you this in Freelancer school?"  
  
"I don't know, why don't you try it with Carolina and see what results you get?"  
  
He physically kicks you off the bed with a snort. "Didn't I  _just_ promise not to die? I'm not dumb enough to test my luck so soon. Now, if you're done reorganizing all your guns or folding your pants or whatever boring junk you do for fun, you should come watch Caboose train the lieutenants with me. It's both the best and worst thing I've ever seen."  
  
"Alright, but you've got to go put your armor back on," you warn him, pulling him to the door.  
  
"You don't have to worry, you know," Tucker says, following you out, looking too smug for his own good. "You're the only one on base who gets to see me like this."  
  
"Not for lack of trying, I'm sure."  
  
"Hey, low blow. But no, that's not what I'm saying. Plenty of people have seen me naked. You're the only person who's seen Junior's shirt," he says casually, letting himself into his room. You stop and think about the implications, and you can't help the little smile that comes to your face.   
  
Through the wall, you hear Tucker fumbling his armor on, and you say, loud enough for him to hear, "I'm giving you fair warning now."  
  
He pokes his head out to give you a quizzical look. "About what?"  
  
"You told me to warn you next time. That's what I'm doing now," and this time, when you lean in, he meets you halfway with a smile. 


	7. some kind of bat person

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I was working on _a thousand lighted places_ again when I realized that while I'd been procrastinating I sort of...forgot how to write for rvb. Which is really stupid, I know. I'm sorry!! I decided to write a few shorter tuckington fics to try to get back in the swing of things!
> 
> This AU is really silly, and I'm sure it's been done before, but here it is anyway! As always, please let me know if you have questions or concerns! Thanks for reading!!

"Pleeeeeeeeaaaase, can we keep him? Please please please."

"No, Caboose."

"Come on, Tucker, I'll take care of him, I promise. I'll feed him and take him on walks and give him baths-"

"We can't keep a _person_ , Caboose!"

Caboose looks terribly offended. "Washington is not a person, Tucker!!" he exclaims, waving his arms in indignation. Tucker stares back incredulously, because honestly, half the time he has no response for the stuff Caboose says. It’s moments like these that he misses Church the most. That asshole.

"Guys, thanks for the ah, kool-aid, but I think it's probably better if I just go," Wash says, putting his half-empty glass down on the kitchen island counter. "Caboose, it's okay, I can find somewhere to crash for another day. The library should still be open."

"Hey, if you're not gonna finish that, I'll take it," Grif says, making grabby hands at Wash's cup. Wash shrugs and slides it over to him, before taking his coat off the kitchen chair it was draped over.

"Well, it was nice meeting you all," Wash says awkwardly, scratching at the darkened roots of his bleached hair. He gives Caboose a small wave and crouches down to put on his shoes.

Caboose's face starts to crumple and Tucker wants to punch himself in the face for giving in, but things have been hard for Caboose since Church left on his dumb soul-searching road trip, and if taking in some strange hobo is going to get him out of his funk, then fine, Tucker can put up with it for a few days. Sure, the dude could be a serial killer, but they survived living with Tex, so they're pretty much invincible as far as he's concerned.

"Okay, wait, just stop. He can stay for tonight, so quit sniffling, Caboose." Pulling Wash away from the door, Tucker points down the narrow hallway to the room across from the bathroom. "There's an empty bedroom there that you can take; just shove any shit you find under the desk or something, whatever, Church isn't around to care anyway. Caboose, go grab those spare sheets from the closet." Caboose tears off down the hall, happy to comply.

"I thought you said I could stay there," Grif complains. “We were gonna talk about _my_ problems today.”

"That was before Caboose decided to adopt a homeless guy," Tucker sighs. He’s not sure when he became the responsible one in the group, or when anyone deemed him qualified to give out advice on anything besides porn and cool swords, but it’s happened, and he’s not happy about it. "Just go home. Buy Simmons a calculator or something and he'll forgive you for the massage chair thing." 

"Boo, you suck," Grif hisses, but he gets up off his chair anyway. Not before vindictively eating the last of their Oreos, of course. "Guess who isn't gonna check tomorrow morning if you guys have been murdered."

"Yeah, in no universe would that person ever have been you, you lazy fucker!" Grif flips him off as he slams the door shut.

Wash coughs, pretending like nobody just called him a potential murderer. "Thanks for letting me stay. I'm kinda strapped for cash at the moment, so I can't spot you any rent, but if you two need anything fixed, tell me. I'm pretty good with my hands, if you know what I mean."

Tucker tries to resist, he really does, but it can't be helped. "Bow chicka wow wow."

"Not like that," the other man snorts.

"Sorry, habit. Um, the shower is sorta janky so if you really want, you can take a look tomorrow. Are you hungry or anything? We have some leftovers, I think." He shakes the empty bag Grif left behind. "Hope you weren't craving Oreos."

"No, I fed earlier. Uh. Ate. I ate." Wash quickly corrects himself, and Tucker's starting to reconsider his stance on the serial killer thing.

Caboose comes back out of Church's old room looking distraught, half a pillow in one hand and a flat sheet dragging along the ground from the other. "Tucker, I do not think this sheet goes with this bed."

Sensing that Tucker really doesn't have the patience to deal, Wash hurries over to Caboose's side. "Here, let me do it myself. Goodnight, Tucker. Thanks again," he says, then they disappear into the guest room. Tucker isn't really sure at what point this day went so completely off track, but he's too tired to care about it right now. Tomorrow. He'll teach Caboose about stranger danger and boot this dude to the curb tomorrow.

\--

Tomorrow dawns, and morning passes, and just as noon is coming in to roost, Tucker finally rolls out of bed and puts on a pair of underwear. Then he remembers their guest and contemplates pants, but decides against it. If Wash can't handle mostly naked guys wandering around then he'll just have to go. When Tucker heads to the bathroom, he notices that Church's door is firmly shut, and a look into the living area confirms that only Caboose is up, messing around with their curtains. He'd read Wash as a morning person, but that was a random assumption, he supposes.

Once the clock strikes 2 pm and Wash still isn't up, Tucker starts to worry. That's a late start, even for a layabout like himself. Is the guy doing something weird in there? Shouldn't he come out and eat lunch? Putting his laptop down on the couch, Tucker wanders into the kitchen to see Caboose tossing all their onions into the trash.

"Aw man, we just bought those last week! I'm gonna kick Donut's ass the next time he tries to sell me his 'special organic' shit," Tucker says, coming up next to his housemate, who's stomping the garbage down with a foot wrapped in a plastic bag. When Caboose removes his foot, Tucker can see that the onions look fine. Not a single sprout in sight. "Wait, what the hell Caboose, there's nothing wrong with that onion."

"No, Tucker, even a cousin of garlic is too dangerous," Caboose says solemnly.

"What?"

"Don't worry, it's all gone. Can you help me duck tape the curtains?"

"Dude, it's duct tape, and what the fuck is going on?" Tucker whines, but he helps tape the fabric down anyway, sealing the windows so no light slips through at the frame. At least Caboose is feeling energetic enough again to actually do something, even if it’s something stupid. When they finish, Caboose checks the clock, but mutters something about it being too early, and goes off to his room to tinker with something alone. Tucker realizes too late that he forgot to ask about Wash, but now Caboose is in some sort of zone, and hell if Tucker's going to venture into the killer's den alone, so he slumps back down on the sofa and goes back to work.

Twenty minutes to seven, Caboose appears, holding what looks to be a visor sewn onto a ski mask, attached to a lampshade. He advances on Tucker, who scrunches back into the couch cushions in horror. He tries to stand, but sitting in the same position for too long has left his legs numb and uncooperative.

"Noooo way. I don't know what that thing is, but I'm not wearing it."

"But I have to practice putting the paint on!" Caboose says, raising up a stick of eye black.

"Just go stand in front of a mirror and practice on yourself!" Tucker grinds out, slithering off his seat to the ground below; Caboose keeps drawing closer.

Right as Tucker is about to resort to rolling away like a log, the sound of Church's door creaking open gives them both pause. Immediately, Caboose starts shouting, "No, it's too soon! Don't come out!" He rushes out of the room, leaving Tucker to crawl after him using only his arms, at an excruciatingly slow rate. When he makes it into the hallway and stands, it's to the unholy vision of Wash wearing Caboose's creepy headgear. 

"Caboose, this is certainly...effective...but I think I'll be fine without it as long as I stay indoors," their boarder tells Caboose, about to pat him on the shoulder, but drawing back at the last moment. After he manages to yank the contraption from his head, it strikes Tucker that Wash looks really pale. Like, in an unhealthy way, not just a pasty stays-indoors-all-the-time kind of way. His fingers are jittering, and he keeps darting glances at the other two, then looking away. Tucker isn't sure if Wash is a junkie, or maybe just really hungry but too polite to ask for food. He decides to operate under the second assumption, cause it's not like he can procure any drugs or anything, but he does know how to make some killer instant ramen.

"Hey, when you're done discussing fashion with Caboose, do you wanna join us for dinner? I was about to go make some noodles. You haven't eaten anything in like a whole day; you've gotta be starving," Tucker offers. Wash's attention turns to him, but he looks out of sorts. His eyes are fixated on Tucker's throat, and his gaze sharpens when Tucker swallows, following the bob of his adam's apple. It's like being pinned down by an invisible force, and though his instinct is to bolt when Wash takes a step forward, his body is unable to react. His pulse jumps when Wash makes eye contact, and that's when he feels the shift in the air. One second they're at least ten feet apart, and the next, they're separated by mere inches. This close, he can see that Wash's pupils are blown and his lips are drawing back, and whoa, that's a lot of teeth, he should probably be concentrating on that instead of the feeling of Wash's hand cupping the base of his neck-

And suddenly Tucker's face is wet. Wash, shocked back to his senses, is dripping with water, eyes focused again. He realizes the position they're frozen in and jumps back around five feet in one bound, retracting his fangs as he goes. Caboose splashes him with a second cup of water, full on in the face.

"Bad Wash! Bad! No eating Tucker! Humans are friends, not food!" shouts Caboose.

"Where the hell did you pick up a fucking _vampire_?!" yells Tucker.

"Shit," says Wash.

\--

They sit around the kitchen island: Caboose slurping down his bowl of noodles with gusto, Tucker with a bottle of beer, and Wash nursing another glass of red kool-aid.

"You don't have to drink that. We all know it's not what you're really after," Tucker says after a long silence.

"Is anyone really ever after kool-aid?" Wash asks drily, swirling his cup. "I think Caboose is trying to wean me off blood with other equally red beverages." Caboose gives them a thumbs-up.

"Yeah, like that's gonna work. So, is someone going to explain to me what's going on, or can I assume the worst?"

Taking the towel off his neck and hanging it over his chair, Wash asks, "I'm intrigued. What would be the worst?"

"Twilight, I guess. If you're gunning for Caboose, I'm gonna call the cops on you for preying on innocents, you stalker trash." Tucker hopes this isn't even remotely true, because whenever he cuts people that Caboose likes out of their lives, the moping lasts forever, and he's had just about enough of that. He’d given up on Church coming home any time soon about two months ago, but Caboose still holds on hope, and it just makes his gloom worse. “I know people,” he says threateningly, pointing his beer bottle at Wash. He’s pretty sure Tex would come to their rescue if he offered enough money, especially if she knew Caboose was involved.

Wash's laugh is short and surprised. "No, if anyone's doing any stalking, it's Caboose. Did you know he figured out I was a vampire within ten minutes? Christ, if my heart was still pumping I'd've gone into cardiac arrest. Then he followed me around for two nights straight, waiting for me to turn into a bat or kick down a tree or something."

"That's what you were doing last weekend?" Caboose nods in answer and returns to the stove to retrieve more food. “Fuck. Okay, so you let Caboose kidnap you? For some reason?”

“He was very concerned about me.” Wash’s stomach grumbles obnoxiously at that very moment, and he gives the counter a pained look, his pupils dilating again as he grimaces. “He’s been keeping track of my...meal schedule ever since we met. And, well-”

“Washington hasn’t eaten for five days! He’s going to starve,” Caboose says indignantly through another mouthful of noodles.

As Tucker considers the implications of that statement – Wash has to drink blood, so does he like... _kill_ people? Can he drink animal blood? Isn’t five days a pretty long time? – Wash holds up a hand.

“Wait, it’s not what you think. I don’t- I don’t feed on people. I’ve got a guy, a supplier, but right when I came to town there was a crackdown-”

A crackdown? On what, vampires? Illegal blood dealers? Has this shit always been happening in Blood Gulch, and Tucker’s just super out of it?

Holy shit, _Blood_ Gulch? Is this entire city infested with vampires?

“-especially with the Charon incident it’s this whole thing now, so Felix skipped town. I mean, it’s not like I expected anything better from him; he’s kind of a shitty person in general,” Wash is still explaining, and Tucker should probably be tuning back in, but he’s only just now actually starting to deal with these new revelations about reality as he knows it.

“How long do you have?” he blurts, deciding to focus on Wash’s problem for now, and the rest of the whole vampire underworld stuff later.

“Until what? I die? I’ve gone for eleven days before, but I was pretty fucked up by then. Around day eight, my control gets a little sloppy.” Wash frowns at his kool-aid but drinks the rest of the cup regardless.

“Dude, it’s only day five and you just tried to take a chunk out of my juicy neck. You sure you’re gonna make it?”

“Yeah, I’m sorry about that.” With a wince, he stands as Caboose wanders back over. “I should get back to Sidewinder; it’s still a haven city, as far as I know, and there's bound to be someone there who can hook me up. Thanks for letting me stay, and thanks for the juice, Caboose, but I don’t think it’s safe for me to stick around any longer. I’m already slipping.” He looks like he wants to pat Caboose again, but holds back.

“But you still haven’t eaten!” Caboose protests.

“I know, buddy, but if I stay here, it’s going to be one of two of you, and I’m not going to let that happen. You’re a good friend, Caboose. Thanks for everything,” he says with a tired smile, and finally gives into his impulse and gives Caboose a brief hug, though Tucker can see him gritting his teeth to stop himself from doing anything stupid.

“Sidewinder’s at least half a day’s drive away,” Tucker breaks in as Wash lets go of Caboose. “Can you make it? By the time you get there, it’ll be morning.”

“I could run there,” Wash says, mulling it over like that’s an actual thing a real person might do. Then again, _vampire_ , so who even knows what his limits are. “But I’m already weakened, and it’ll probably drain me further. But it's my only choice. There's no one here stupid enough to keep dealing after last week.”

That isn't completely true, Tucker realizes suddenly. Maybe the vampire police or whoever have been shutting down blood suppliers, and real hospitals have got to have real security, but there's one place he can think of that is under absolutely no surveillance whatsoever, for better or for worse. Probably worse, but right now it's starting to look like a lucky break for them, so he snaps his fingers to grab the attention of the other two.

“Nah, ditch that dumb plan. Caboose, go get me my car keys. We're driving to the power station.” Caboose straightens instantly, catching onto Tucker’s idea. 

“Good idea, Tucker! Sometimes you can be smart too!”

“You, go put on whatever special vamp clothes you need,” Tucker tells Wash after he dumps all their dishes in the sink and chugs the rest of his beer.

“We wear normal clothes, Tucker,” Wash says.

“If by normal you mean lame, then sure. We've got somewhere to be, so get your bloodsucker ass in gear. I've got a plan.”

\--

“Your friend does blood transfusions out of a _van_? That seems extremely illegal? And unsafe?” Wash says, his voice spiraling up shrilly.

“Doc’s job is...sketchy. Let's put it that way.”

They sit huddled in the bushes outside the wind power station where Doc still lives for some reason, even though his roomie Omega bounced over a year ago and his super dubious job pays him more than enough to move somewhere less shitty. He claims it's because he doesn't want to dig up and replant his whole garden somewhere new, but Tucker thinks he has some sort of Stockholm Syndrome thing with this place.

There's a stretch of land between their hiding place and Doc’s van, and though Tucker knows for a fact it's unguarded, Caboose is still wearing a cowboy hat and sunglasses to stay incognito. Wash has to reach up to readjust the hat whenever it starts to slip.

“Why are we hiding in the bushes? Shouldn't you call him, or ring his doorbell? Does he even have a doorbell?” Wash stops crouching to squint at the door, and Tucker has to yank him back down so they don't get caught. Not that Doc’s got security cameras or anything.

“Nah, we’re not gonna ask him for the blood. We're just gonna steal it.”

“Woohoo!” Caboose cheers, waving his bolt cutters. 

“What? No, I'm not going to let you steal blood for me. You barely even know me!” Wash shakes Tucker’s hand off, their skin brushing for a moment and his fangs extend back out involuntarily. He claps a hand over his mouth and jumps back again, putting some distance between them so he doesn't smell Tucker as much or something. Tucker rolls his eyes. For a vampire, Wash is really way less cool than he should be.

“Where else you gonna get food at this hour, you loser? Man, withdrawal is a bad look for you. Anyway, Doc’s not going to get in trouble. He's got like eighty bags in there; I don't think anyone even keeps track of how many he has. We’ll just grab a few. He won't even notice.”

“What the hell is wrong with this town?” Wash mutters, and Tucker shrugs.

“Beats me. Put on the dumb hat Caboose made, just in case somebody's watching for once.”

The three of them hurry over, and Caboose goes to cut the lock off the doors when they notice it isn't even locked, just hanging in the latch.

“What the _fuck_.” Wash rips off his mask-hat, looking utterly disgusted at the lack of security.

Tucker shoves him into the van, where he sits heavily on the stretcher. To the right is the definitely not medical grade fridge where Doc keeps all his blood. “Just don't think too hard about it, okay? What blood type do you like? O? B?” He and Caboose clamber in too, and he directs Caboose to start loading up their icebox.

“Doesn't matter,” Wash says, grabbing the bag that Tucker tosses to him. He's about to bite into the plastic when Tucker grabs his arm and he freezes in place, staring intently at Tucker’s wrist before dragging his gaze up slowly to Tucker’s face instead. His eyes do that thing again, where they darken and seem to stare through Tucker, and suddenly his own pulse sounds twice as loud when he notices the distinct lack of a heartbeat running under Wash’s skin. Tucker feels that weird, suffocating force from before pressing in on him again, trying to quell his movement, but he manages to get his words out even though he can't break eye contact.

“Wait, don't you want to heat it up at least? Cold blood sounds fucking gross.”

“It is. But if I don't drink this now I'm going to drink you instead,” Wash snaps, and rips into the bag. The set-up is perfect, the innuendo just waiting right there for Tucker, but he’s too busy watching Wash drain the bag with twisted fascination. The blood looks thick and sluggish, but Wash is shotgunning it like a champ, a stray trickle of blood starting to drip from his mouth, so Tucker shakes himself out of his trance, lets go of Wash, and goes to help Caboose.

They grab an assortment from throughout the fridge, trying to make it less obvious that anything was stolen, then heave the icebox out of the van. They probably took more than they should have, but in for a penny, in for a pound, Tucker supposes.

Wash follows them soon after, licking his thumb to clean the streak of blood off his lips. Already he looks better, a healthier glow to his skin and his eyes less sunken, though he’s still rocking the insomniac raccoon spots, which leads to the question of whether vampires sleep or not. But when he isn’t about to die, Wash is actually kinda good-looking, not that Tucker’s noticing or anything.

“Feeling better?” Tucker asks as they lug the icebox back to his car.

“Good enough,” Wash says. “Let me get that.” He lifts it effortlessly, like he’s picking up the mail, and carries it easily to the car. Caboose trots after him like a puppy.

“I guess it’s fine as long as you don’t want to suck on us anymore. Bow chicka bow wow,” Tucker mutters, finally getting it out of his system.

“Well, I wouldn’t rule it out yet,” Wash says as he tosses the icebox in the trunk, which seems threatening at first, until Tucker notices that he almost looks like he’s smirking. Okay then.

As Tucker drives them back home, Caboose grills Wash about the best way to serve blood which makes double no sense since Caboose is neither a cook nor a vampire. Tucker scans the streets, which look no different from usual, even though his world as effectively been flipped upside down. It’s been a long, strange day, but as they coast through downtown with the windows down and the radio crackling with some pop song Tucker’s heard more often drunk than sober, he sees Caboose’s smiling face in his rearview mirror and decides maybe all the bullshit of the last few months was worth it to bring them here.

\--

Caboose has been put to bed after a promise that Wash would stay another day, so now Tucker’s sitting cross-legged on the living room floor watching reruns of Samurai Jack with Wash while he sips slowly on a hot mug of AB negative.

“So,” Tucker says, casually, as the show goes to commercial, “what’s it like being a vampire?”

“Less than ideal,” Wash replies. He sets his cup down.

“Oh.” 

Wash laughs slightly, which Tucker’s almost surprised to hear. It’s a nice sound, wry and unexpected. “No, it’s not as bad as I’m making it out to be. The sunlight issue sucks, and I miss garlic a lot more than I thought I would, but. There are some perks.”

“Like the ‘zoomy thing’ that Caboose wouldn’t shut up about?” Tucker says with extreme air-quotes.

“Yes, like the zoomy thing. I try not to go above 45 miles per hour or people start to freak out. Let’s see, enhanced senses are useful, but can have their drawbacks. Super strength is almost always handy, though.”

Tucker whistles. “Sounds great for picking up chicks. Literally.”

“I’m not sure most women want to be literally lifted off the ground, Tucker,” Wash says with a snort, and takes another sip from his cup.

“Are you kidding? Girls dig that sort of thing. Makes ‘em feel skinny and shit. Hell, even I wouldn’t mind.”

Wash wrinkles his nose, and it draws attention to his freckles. They’re all over his arms too, but it’s sort of cute. Tucker’s always kinda liked freckly girls.

“You’re telling me you want to be picked up.” 

“And zoomed around? Hell yeah, I do! Wait, fuck, can you _fly_? ‘Cause that would be badass.”

“No, I can’t fly. But I can throw you. That’d be like flying.” He says it like it’s a good suggestion, though his expression says he clearly knows how stupid the idea is.

Tucker shoves him aside to crawl back onto the couch as the show returns. “You asshole, I don’t want to break my fucking neck,” he laughs, and Wash cracks a smile back.

“If you were a vampire you wouldn't have that problem.”

“No thanks. Wouldn't want to deprive the ladies of my hot bod. I look twice as good under the sun.”

“I'm sure you do,” Wash says, dry as ever, but he's still smiling, so Tucker counts this one as a victory. After a brief pause, Wash coughs and tells him, “I, uh. I could zoom you around if you wanted. For educational purposes.”

Tucker is about to jump on that offer when he stops to think, for once, about the immediate consequences. One, Caboose would probably be pissed that they tried it without him. Two, he still isn’t sure what the deal is with possible supernatural police squads. Three, that would involve Wash carrying him, and he’s not currently prepared to deal with those weird vampire-induced feelings that happen every time they touch.

So he gives him a “thanks, but I’ll wait til after Caboose gets a turn,” and they leave it at that.

They watch another episode until Tucker can't stop yawning every two minutes and figures he needs to sleep. Wash also decides he should turn in so he doesn't burn to a crisp, and walks back down the hallway with him.

“You still gonna head out to Sidewinder?” Tucker asks through another yawn. Just 24 hours ago, he was itching to kick Wash out of his place, but after watching the way he somehow gets along with Caboose, Tucker decides that maybe they can play host for a little longer. Wash is far from the worst person to ever crash with them. “Church isn't coming back for his room any time soon.”

“Thanks, but I better go tomorrow night and get a feel for what the situation out there is like. Talk to some people in the community, figure out if it's safe to stay in Blood Gulch before I decide to move here.” Wash runs a hand through his hair, ruffling it all up, and gives Tucker a friendly pat on the arm. He isn't gritting his teeth this time, but there's still something stiff about the action, and it causes bizarre feelings under Tucker’s skin. A different sort of bizarre: shivery and confused and kind of warm. _Super_ weird. 

“Thanks again for all the help. And the blood. You guys really got me out of a tough spot,” Wash says as he steps toward his room.

“No prob, dude,” Tucker says, brushing it off, but Wash shakes his head.

“If there's anything I can do, let me know. I'll take a look at that shower of yours tomorrow before I go, but tell me if you want anything else fixed.”

Tucker waves him off. “Nah, we like our stuff kind of messed up anyway. Gives it character. But, uh, if you're ever in town again, you should swing by,” he says, trying to figure out to phrase this best. “Caboose is like obsessed with you, so, you know, you'd be doing me a solid if you came to hang out with him once in awhile. If you're free.” He gives another careless shrug, trying to stay nonchalant, but Wash nods seriously.

“Sounds great. Goodnight, Tucker. Sleep well.”

“Now that I know you won’t murder me in my sleep, I will.”

“No murder, I promise. Not tonight, at least.”

“That’s comforting. ‘Night, Wash.”

Wash offers one last tired handwave, before heading into Church’s room. Tucker watches the door close, then goes to peek in on Caboose. Still asleep, no hidden dogs, nothing on fire. Good. He finally returns to his own bed and slumps into his pillow, completely exhausted. He should still talk to Caboose about personal safety, but that can wait.

It’s been too long since life has given them a break, and if stealing blood of questionable origin and hanging out with semi-hot nocturnal vagrants is what it takes for things to go their way, then maybe Tucker should just embrace it. Church was always the worrier between them anyway; Tucker isn’t cut out for that shit. Tomorrow, he’s gonna kick back and relax and watch Caboose annoy someone else for a change. And maybe try out that zoomy thing. 


End file.
